A scholar: I settle in my work, but the work is unaware of it. The more I care about what I write, the more I cut myself off from the sources of my writing. The more sincere I want to be, the more the faster I must let the words take over: I cannot refuse to let them exist without me.
    And yet I am the origin of their existence. I am, therefore, the man who conceived the verbal being which will have a fate of its own on which, in turn, my fate as a writer depends.

A scholar: I write and right away I become the word which escapes me and thanks to which I am, the word which leads to other words and asserts itself as such. I am multiplied in my sentence as a tree unfolds in its branches.

A scholar: When a writer bends over his work he believes, or rather makes us believe, that his face is the one his words reflect. He is lying. He is lying as God be if He claimed to have created man in His image; because which then would be His image?

– Jabés, The Book of Questions (trans. R. Waldrop)

Maybe he just needs to be himself, X tells me, maybe that’s the problem, that he’s not being himself. Maybe he should just be himself without caring what people think. Maybe he cares too much about what people think, he says. Maybe he just hasn’t found himself yet, he says, and that’s why he’s not himself yet and cares too much about what people think. Maybe he needs to find himself in order to be himself without caring what people think, he says. Because only when he finds himself will he be able to be himself without caring what people think, he says. So to be himself he has to find himself, that much is clear, he says. So how does he find himself? he asks. Maybe he should take an exotic holiday and take a long walk along a beach, he says. Maybe a nice long break would help his mind settle into its natural folds. Maybe he should take some time off for himself for once, he says, just to be himself and reflect on what’s important in life, find his centre. He could start by taking a bubble bath, he says, pamper himself a bit and think about what to do. Maybe he should take a yoga class, he says, get centred and get in touch with atman and Brahman, be one with the sea like a wave and all that. Or maybe he just needs to grow up, he says, be a man, earn some money and get a life, or maybe he just needs to get laid, can I find him a girl?

X has studied the sources, he tells me, and he’s found out how to be a man, in other words what women want. He’s going to lay it out as clearly as possible for me, he says, for his own peace of mind too, so he can see the road he needs to take. What he needs to do is to be strong and silent and caring and independent, he says. He needs to be responsible and fun-loving. He needs to know when to chill out and enjoy life as it comes, and when to buckle down and get professional. He needs to be emotionally healthy, he says, it’s all about being emotionally healthy. And balanced, he says, being a balanced person. He needs to be kind and helpful around the house and with the baby, be a man and take charge and bring home the bacon. He needs to be tender and rugged and sensitive and hard, he says. Or maybe just needs to get laid, he says, or get a proper job, get a life. Maybe he should start wearing a suit, he says.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

– Pascal

How does he manage to walk upright, X asks me, to go about his normal business? What keeps him from crawling around his room and flopping on his back, muttering and babbling? What keeps him from going mental? It’s my stupidity, isn’t it? he asks. That’s what saves me again and again. My limited horizon, which keeps me focused on the nearest task, he says, like a chimp who wants his reward for solving a puzzle. And his charlatanism, he says, not to forget his charlatanism, which prevents him from diving too deeply into anything. In fact he’s relatively happy in his stupidity and charlatanism, isn’t he, he says. Some atavistic instinct in him must know that they’re what’s saving him, he says. After all, it could be worse, much worse, he could be rolling on the floor, going mental, with no barriers. After all, he still laughs at sitcoms and cheers on tennis players, he still feeds himself and meets his deadlines.

Like someone whose eyes, when lifted up after staring at a book for a long time, wince at the mere sight of a naturally bright sun, so too, when I lift my eyes from looking at myself, it hurts and stings me to see the vivid clarity and independence-from-me of the world outside, of the existence of others, of the position and correlation of movements in space. I stumble on the real feelings of others. The antagonism of their psyches towards mine shoves me and trips up my steps. I slide and tumble above and between the sounds of their strange words in my ears, the hard and definite falling of their feet on the actual floor, their motions that really exist, their various and complex ways of being persons who are not mere variants of my own.

– Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (trans. R. Zenith)

X is in the pub again, as if I didn’t know, and he has something to tell me, he says, though it’s hard to find the words what with the flickering images on the screen, the music, and the drink making its dull and stimulating way around his brain. And the conversations, he says, above all the conversations. He slips in and out of them, he says, strangers’ conversations, he can’t help overhearing them. Even as he talks to me he relates to their job problems and tries to understand their witticisms despite himself, slips in and out of his own trains of thought and forgets what he was going to say. He could become them, he says, maybe he is them in a sense, or rather their words. Now I remember what I was about to tell you, he says. It was something about the thin walls between things, between events, emotions or selves. I could be that tennis player on the screen, he says, he’s about to lose a set point. The word ‘membranes’ pops into his head again. She just spilled her drink on his lap and I almost reached out to grab the glass and felt the liquid on my thighs. How embarrassing and uncanny, am I some kind of creep? he says. Why can’t he keep his thoughts in check? Maybe he just needs to get laid, he says. When he drinks the grey room is unlocked, he tells me, and it’s a nice relief for the timid, nagging flesh, but an unlocked room is an unsafe room, he says, a room thrown open is a room thrown open to other rooms and whatever else might be out there. By some law of nature, he says, the drab greyness ebbs out and is replaced by… what? By colour, by wind, by life, threatening or friendly rooms, alternate worlds. One impression after another seizes you, he says, you sway in your room. I knew what I wanted to tell you a moment ago, he says, let me focus. Stay with me, he says. These rooms, these alternate worlds withdraw from each other in order to preserve themselves, don’t they, he says, and at the same time are drawn to each other to seek their own meanings. They compete like cells in the body compete, but without aim, he says. The membranes between them – are they walls or membranes? – keep in the finite and let in the infinite, let out the finite and keep out the infinite, so each world is a kind of whole among countless wholes and at the same time part of a whole he can’t even begin to imagine, let alone what lies behind that whole, he says. Each answer in the conversations he’s overhearing now is an answer and part of an answer, just as everything he’s telling me is an answer and part of an answer, even if I never bother asking him any questions or giving him any answers, he says.

Deviser of the voice and of its hearer and of himself. Deviser of himself for company. Leave it at that. He speaks of himself as of another. He says speaking of himself, He speaks of himself as of another. Himself he devises too for company. Leave it at that. Confusion too is company up to a point. Better hope deferred than none. Up to a point. Till the heart starts to sicken. Company too up to a point. Better a sick heart than none. Till it starts to break. So speaking of himself he concludes for the time being, For the time being leave it at that.

– Beckett, from ‘Company’

River-dweller: I cannot get to the other bank without your help. Ferryman, tell me of the other bank.

Ferryman: For me, it is the bank to get to, just like this one is when I am over there.

River-dweller: Is it like the banks of my childhood? It is so far I cannot tell form here.

Ferryman: What matter what the country is like if it excites your imagination. What matter what its banks are like. It is your country as long as you think of it, your banks.

River-dweller: I would like to know where this country begins and ends, if its vegetation is related to ours. The shape of its trees and rocks. I would like to know what happens there.

Ferryman: There is life, like here, and life in death. Like here, there is darkness in the light of the Name.

– Jabés, The Book of Questions (trans. R. Waldrop)

X tells me he thinks some malevolent spirit must have visited him in the womb, a bad ghost. I can sense it now, is it you? he asks me. Something went wrong somewhere, he says, probably as far back as the womb. You slipped out of the womb with me, didn’t you? he asks. Or maybe you slipped into the womb, grew with me, then slipped back out with me, he says. That’s why you’re still here, like a dead twin, he says, that’s why I can’t get rid of you.