Education in failure

Christ on the cross, Buddha beneath the tree, says X. Wasn’t that where they learned to fail, so that we too could learn to fail, weren’t the cross and the forest their places of learning? How rare it must be to fail, to really fail, he says. Kafka’s tribunal in Berlin before Felice, Beckett in his mother’s room. Master Eckhart’s trial. That’s an education. There should be diplomas in such education. And me? he says. Me talking to you, tapping on my keyboard in my room, pausing to sip wine? What kind of education does that amount to? What are you teaching me? Fuck all, he says, that’s what. Tap some more, you say, it’s got you this far. Tap tap tap, sip sip sip. That’s my education in failure, here in my place of learning, which needs hoovering, he says.