What else can we say? I say we, I mean to say, What else can you tell me? Is that what I mean? Or do I mean, What can I say to you, through you? What can I record, that is, that won’t be a failure to record? Let’s say, for instance, that I have to pass water several times a day, sometimes more, sometimes as much as ten times, even more when I drink beer. This is fact on one level and drivel on another. I record, testing the event for truth, and fail. And my record becomes a record of itself, its own test. I fail to record what happens, though I only write to record. I turn to look at you and you’re gone. What remains is the lack of a record, which I record again, for you. Several times a day, then, at a minimum. Sometimes as much as ten times. Everything I drink flows right through me. This may be due to a small bladder, or maybe a large prostate gland, how should I know, I can’t know everything. That does limit it to two possibilities, though of course there may be many others. At any rate it interferes with my sleep. I have to get up at least three times a night to dribble into the bowl. Sometimes I have to tickle the tip of my foreskin with my index finger, either the left or the right, to make it happen, sometimes I even turn on the tap while I tickle myself. I put it down to sleepiness when I stand there swaying before the bowl waiting for the droplets, to reassure myself, but it’s not much different during the day if the truth be told, and I suppose it must. When they’re out, the droplets I mean, it’s hard to get back to sleep, knowing the next little stabs in the bladder will start soon, since the bother of getting up means I had to take a drink of water. I shit more than I should think was normal too, up to five times a day. It all runs through me rushing and gurgling as if it won’t stand for being inside me. They say the intestines function like a second brain, perhaps they are trying to tell me something. Not to mention the sperm, rivers of it, not always wilfully choked out but always willing, and the snot that constantly flows from my nostrils, so that I have to carry around tissues wherever I go like a woman, honking into them and worrying about where to dispose of them. Yet I live, I pace and scribble, a solid man to all outward appearances.
He sits in the chair as the cat takes up its position on the bookshelf. I start walking along the perimeter of the room as he studies the ceiling, which is divided into nine quadrangles by peeling lists, to no apparent purpose. When I pass him the second time, close by, he gives me a little shove with his elbow. The cat, the little panther, raises it lids and trains its opaque eyes on the scene, then lowers them again when I reached the next wall, the southern one, say. Did you see him? he asks me. Did you tell him anything? Not a good word, or he wouldn’t have left when he saw you coming. This is a problem for me, do you understand? I don’t trust you. But maybe I shouldn’t think so much, isn’t that what you’re thinking? Isn’t that what they’d say? It’s true, I admit it, I shouldn’t think so much, especially about myself, I create more problems for myself every day. And no solutions. I’ll lead myself into perdition, I’ll take my own hand and lead myself down into Hades and tell myself get out while you can and don’t look back. Perdition, what a thought! he says, still staring at the ceiling. But it makes sense, he says, we can only lead ourselves into perdition, we have to be willing. Maybe they’re right, he says, maybe I shouldn’t think about myself so much. Maybe I should get a dog, maybe that would help, a loyal pet, not like this tart, gesturing at the cat. Or a chinchilla, or a snake, something that won’t run about, something to keep him company, something he can keep locked up. Tired now, faintly nauseated, I sit down on my cot and wait for him to leave. Why’ve you stolen it, he says, do you feed it? Say something. What do you do in here anyway? This walking around is pathetic, you look like an idiot, like a retarded prisoner. I hear you from downstairs you know. I leave to relieve myself. Oh very nice, he says, very hospitable. When I return he tells me he doesn’t think he’d mind prison too much, at least not solitary confinement. His room’s like a prison too. No, he doesn’t think he’d mind isolation much, he says, the walls wouldn’t make much difference and the seasons mean nothing to him. The interrogators wouldn’t know what to do with him, with their stupid games, I’ll tell you that for free, he says. They’d just think he was arrogant and try to break him down, you can tell them I’ve got their number, they needn’t bother. Whoever heard of such a creature! An abomination, he says, that’s what he is.
A new day, a new dawn as they say, the dawning of the final interminable day. What shall I scribble today? Should I list the things I’m going to do? But I’ll do next to nothing, I never do anything but next to nothing. I sit in my room and scribble when you send me the words. What words? These, I suppose, for lack of any better. For lack of anything better to do. Is this the best you can do? Then let’s begin. But how to begin, with so little to say, so little to do, so little done? And once begun how to end? Start with a question, that’s as good a start as any. This question leads to a second question. And then? The void I need to fill, your void, you. The void that enters me and fills me with words. This is neither beginning, of course, nor end. I’ve always been here now, in this place that has called me back, this place I call out to, this place of echoes. It’s a weird sacrifice you lead me into, if I’ve learned anything, if there’s anything to learn, which is unlikely. Here where your tide has thrown me, is throwing me, safe from help, where you throw me and draw me back into yourself. This is most moving. Grown men sigh and the ladies go moist. Enough. Continue, blacken the pages, there’s nothing worse than a white page. You say jump and I’ll jump, up to their world. Or is it still mine? No, nothing is mine, only ever yours, no world but you forevermore, my refuge and enemy, amen.
What else? Let’s say he appears at my door again. But he hasn’t left? Right you are, he’s still there, still here. And the cat? Gone. Where can it have gone? Sprang out the window perhaps. But the window’s closed. It’s served its purpose perhaps, what do I know. I go to the bathroom to take a dump. Sadly the door closes inadequately no matter how I pull it, and he has a sour look on his face when I return to my cot. Did you hear a thing I said? he asks.
I’m boring myself. Where else can we go? Nowhere to go. Propelled into action only by my bladder, my intestines, my balls. Then there’s the stomach, of course. And the brain? Mine could happily survive without the things these other organs require, in a goldfish bowl, say, or on a metal tray, hooked up to electronic devices with wires. And you, where would you be? Maybe I’d be free of you at last.
Nowhere to go, nothing to achieve. I could have myself take a walk. Take another walk, one more, on another path, through another village. Consider the possibilities. They are if not endless at least numerous, and if not numerous at least several. There are possibilities, let’s leave it at that. Or I could drink, get drunk, get drunk one last time, drunk again, like the first time, drunker than ever, I could walk out of here and go on a bender, who’s to say one can’t walk and drink at the same time, it’s perfectly possible. Then perhaps the possibilities would present themselves. Consider them. Imagine it’s spring, withdraw from the world and pour out, you’re walking and drinking. That’s it, talk to yourself as if such a thing were possible, as if the other you weren’t here. The squawks of the gulls as they coast offshore to who knows where, the surf’s wild spray, seeds flying through the air. Go farther, music down a windy street in the new village reminds you that there are still possibilities, maybe even for you. You could travel, see the world. You’ve seen some of it but what did it amount to? A grain of sand. And it would all be different now, for nothing ever ceases, of that at least you can be sure, seeds fly and grow, each possibility pregnant with possibilities. Maybe not so much for you, but how good to know they’re there all around you, despite you. Walk. Swig. In Paris they’re cavorting with baguettes and croissants. It’s spring there too. In Rome they stand by their mopeds and lick ice cream cones. It’s spring there too, of course. Seeds fly there too, through the sunlight and onto the ruins and cars, different seeds from different plants. Consider the Mongolians, driving their Ladas and throat singing in the dust. What season is it there? You could find out, take the Trans-Siberian railroad and get distracted on the way by a thousand sights and accidents. And even they would only be a grain of sand. This goodly frame the earth, where each possibility slips away from you into other possibilities, so that you’re always both outside and inside possibility, always leaving and becoming, dying and living! Where am I getting this from? The movies maybe. Maybe the goldfish bowl was better. Or the second brain, the gut that forces action with the dubious assistance of the bladder and balls, action without thought, without you.
