Work in Progress

What have our lives been about? What have they been for? What did we do with them, our lives?

Have we simply blundered – wandering confusedly? Have we simply staggered, and fallen over and again? Is there somewhere we’re being led? A direction in which we’re leading ourselves?

Will there ever be peace? Will there even be an end – a full stop?

 

What will we have been doing with our lives? Were we merely drunk in charge of our lives? Were we simply wreckers and ruiners of our lives? Were we only ever wasters, squanders of the gift that was given to us?

Did we ever think that life was precious? Did we ever treat it preciously?

 

What didn’t we do? How didn’t we live? Because that’s as important as what we did do. Or didn’t do. As how we lived?

Did we miss the clues? Did we take the wrong path? Did we get things wrong? Did we do what we could have? Did we follow our orders? What orders? Was here something we were supposed to find? Was there a chance that we missed?

 

Were we misled? Did we mislead ourselves? Get in our own way? Were we obstacles to ourselves?

 

Are we still alive? How is it that we’re still alive? How is it that our lives go on?

They stopped the world doing anything but appear. This is the tyranny of appearance. Nothing hidden. Nothing forgotten.

This world without shadows. This overlit world. This overdeveloped world.

This transparent world – that’s only ever itself. This tautologous world. The same and the same same.

That knows only how to be itself. That’s never interrupted. That’s without transcendence.

This is what they’ve made. This is what they’ve done. This is their crime, that pretends that it’s not a crime.

 

It doesn’t sleep, this world. It’ll never sleep. And if it never sleeps, it’ll never dream.

 

This humourless world. This world without laughter. This serious world. This weighing upon us world.

Had Cicero been possessed? Had she been inhabited? Was she being ventriloquised by alien forces? Had Cicero been Alan-ized? Had she been replaced? Bodysnatched! Was this a Cicero doppelganger, sitting in her office? A synth, in the form of Cicero? A replicant?

 

Cicero’s pact with Alan. Cicero’s selling her soul to Alan. To the Alan-Mephistopheles.

 

Somehow, we’d entered the Alan world. Somehow, we’d crossed an invisible border into the kingdom of Alan. Into Alan’s domain. Where the Alans of the world rule. Where Alan and his ilk are in charge.

The Alan era had opened. The Alan epoch!

 

Had Cicero been Alan’d? Alan-dized? Alan-dated?

 

We didn’t get an attack Alan sign. An open season on Alan sign.

Cicero didn’t signal us to let slip the dogs of war.

 

Cicero didn’t give us an Alan warning. An Alan alert. Cicero didn’t warn us about the Alan trap. The Alan danger.

 

She didn’t warn us about the Alan-ness of Al. His essential Alan-hood. His Alan-icity and Alan-itude. She’d said nothing about the essence of Alan.

 

Henceforward we were to exist Alanishly

The intelligentsia! she cried. This is the new intelligentsia! This is the new thought tribe!

We were the true Europeans, she said. The last ones. This is the remnant of European philosophy. We’re the only ones who care. The only ones who feel it.

And we probably couldn’t even spell Nietzsche, she said. We’d have trouble with Schleiermacher.

 

The intelligentsia! she cried. Cicero was actually dancing with pleasure. She was doing a jig! With her tight perm (she still had a tight perm then.)

This is unwine. Non-wine. This is zero wine. Wine with the wine taken out.

It’s not even eager to please. Not even anything. This nothing wine tastes of nothing. It’s the taste of Organisational Management.

 

It’s, like, anywhere wine. It could come from anywhere. Or nowhere.

It’s not delicious, but nor is it disgusting. It couldn’t offend anyone.

 

Wine’s supposed to have actual characteristics. It’s supposed to be as individual as a person. But this …!?

This wine’s warm.

It’s, like, natural wine. Pond scum wine. Filled with living things, probably. Like primal soup. Full of nematodes and flukeworms. Parasites, of all kinds.

And we’re drinking it.

Maybe there are good parasites. Like good bacteria.

This wine has its own flora and fauna. It’s populated. It has wildlife.

 

This wine’s moving. There are currents in this wine. Strange blobs – forming and unforming. I think this wine might be sentien, or something. It’s moving – spontaneously. Some serious lava-light shit going on.

 

This wine’s actually bubbling. And its thick. Like some geyser. Like it’s going to erupt at any moment. Like it’s Old fucking Faithful.

 

This is heavy wine. Completely viscous. Like it’s a version of mercury. It’s like that stuff the Terminator 2 guy is made out of. I think it’s going to morph into something. Or extend a prehensile limb.

 

This wine’s shining. It’s noctilucent. It’s sparking, like its full of stars.

Is it supposed to cheer us up near the end of our journey?

 

Shouldn’t we be able to transmute the poison? To change it within us. To let it become something else.

Become what?

Where the poison’s at its deepest, there too is its cure …

*This wine’s, like, a life form. Like an amoeba wine.

It’s got its own interests, this wine. Its own agenda.

It wants to be freed from the glass. It wants to live its own life. Have you ever seen an octopus escape from captivity. Like that.

God, what would this wine do once it’s inside you?

Take you over, maybe. Possess you.

*It's, like, Twin Peaks wine, it won’t pour. It won’t come out of the bottle.

*I think this wine wants to communicate. I think it wants to say something.

Maybe if we ask questions.

*This wine seems wise. It seems to know things. It’s, like, oracle wine. I think this wine might have all the answers.

*This wine’s telepathic. It’s making me … think things.

What things?

*This wine breaks, like, the laws of physics.

*It’s aristocratic this wine. It has nobility. Julius Evola would approve.

*Are we supposed to be drinking these in any order?

* There’s a kind of fish in this wine. Is there a kind of fish that lives in wine? That swims around in it?

I think the fish – whatever it is – is actually made of wine.

God! Do you eat this wine or drink it?

Should you just drink it down, do you think? Slip it down like an oyster.

I can’t drink something’s that’s alive!

 

This wine is festered, not fermented.

 

Eastern European doom wine, that’s what this is. From the deepest-reaching vine roots.

 

The wine is bubbling. The wine is, like, spurting. It’s a geyser. It’s frothing over, like some potion.

 

What’s the relationship between the poison of Cicero’s wine and the general poison?

Perhaps Cicero’s wine is an antidote.

But shouldn’t an antidote taste nice?

Maybe it takes poison to combat the poison.

 

There’s actually a Geordie wine. A bit like Newcastle brown ale.

Geordie wine! Do wines even grow this far north?

They do in Spital Tongues. In the allotments. There’s a microclimate in the Spital Tongues allotments.

Our whole body’s warning us: do not drink this. Our olfactory system, our forebrains are warning us: steer clear!

Everything in us resists. Cries out. There’s, like, rising bile. The impulse to retch. But we’re drinking anyway.

What are we becoming? What is it turning us into? What process is taking place? We’re, like, overriding nature. Even disgust.

 

The postgraduates are retching.

Of course they are! And so they should! It’s part of their education. They have to learn the arts of disgust. They have to work up from disgust at this or that thing to disgust at everything. Disgust at the world!

World-disgust: Cicero would approve.

It has to be visceral. It has to involve all the senses. It has to be olfactory. Gustatory. The retcher is the person who has begun to understand these things.

What’s wrong with us? What’s so very wrong? Do other people feel this wrong, too? Is it only us? Like there’s something wrong with our existence. No – like our existence itself is fundamentally wrong. Are we the only ones to feel this way?

What’s the opposite of election? Being cursed, maybe. Is that what we are – cursed? Damned? Who damned us? Who selected us to be damned? What’s so special about us? Nothing special. There’s nothing special about our fuckedupness either.

It’s desperate, this campus – in its non-desperation. It’s imploring this campus – even as it doesn’t implore. It’s crying out this campus – even as it doesn’t cry out.

Organisational Management honesty. Organisational Management transparency.

Everything’s visible. Everything’s there to be seen.

Organisational Management sincerity – they mean it. They mean this. They’re trying their best. They’re trying to be good.