Category Archives: Writing

‘One day I drew a line that meant stop and a line that meant start and stepped from line to line. I’d move the starting line every day and step across it. It was a simple question of life and death, a simple question for once! Going forward would mean to renew the ties to life, going back would be to feel the pull of death. As usual the voice was close, opening its mouth to tell me to listen, to tell me I didn’t even know how to listen.’

‘I took walks and train rides, scouting for ways and places to do it, toying with it. I narrowed it down to a train. I’d get off at a rural station, walk across the rolling fields with an eye on my watch, find a suitable place by a cluster of trees and wait. I’d have what they’d need in my bag, which I’d leave by the tracks. Sweet dream… What was I playing at? Whose will was this? It came down to a simple question of death or life… You’ve run out of options, said the voice, what’s holding you back but your own cowardice? You can’t live and you can’t die, you’re beyond useless. You couldn’t make it work and you can’t even make this work. You’d get that floating feeling of terror and aloneness and you’d cling to your useless life and go home to your regrets with your tail between your legs. You’ve got nothing left but me but you can’t even listen to me. How will this end for you, have you ever thought about that? Are you even capable of thinking about it? No, you’re not, that’s why you need me. Are you starting to see? But you can’t even listen to me, you can’t even do that right. Yet your whole useless life has come down to this and will continue to come down to this, and you know it. I know you know and you know I know you know. There’s nothing for it, it said, you know you’ve run out of options. You didn’t have a lot to start with, and those you had you squandered and now you’ve run out. And the longer you live the stronger I’ll grow. Listen to me… I took walks and train rides, scouting for ways and places to do it, toying with it. I narrowed it down to a train. I’d get off at a rural station, walk across the rolling fields with an eye on my watch, find a suitable place by a cluster of trees and wait. I’d have what they’d need in my bag, which I’d leave by the tracks. Sweet dream…’

‘I remember a couple of days when I was pulled right out of the hole, it felt like for good. (Everything felt like for good in those days.) The voice silent, blissful respite. No need but to exist and calm with whatever came. For a day or two, for a day, for a few moments I saw how things could be, should be.’

‘I remember being pulled out of the hole some days after. Out of dead time. From time to time it would happen. Somehow I’d silence the voice that told me I wasn’t listening and wouldn’t understand if I did. I’m trying to remember what was out there. Unfamiliar territory, dangerous in its own way. Pregnant with possibility and risk. Easier to step back in the shadows and start listening again: you think you’re free, you think wrong, listen to me.’

‘I’d lie in bed all morning daydreaming of a sudden fatal accident. A crash, a fall, a meteor. Something that would take me at a stroke, since I was too weak to give myself over either to death or life. In daydreams everything was possible if unsatisfactory. But it seemed less unsatisfactory to dream of dying than living. Almost comforting.’

‘And then it came back, when some time had passed, the voice that told me, You made yourself ill, you let yourself go. I’ve let myself go, I said, you’re right. You don’t know the half of it, it said. You let yourself go and you paid for it and now you have to climb back and you don’t know how to start without my telling you. And you won’t listen.’

‘It was the first thought I woke up to at night. It seemed perfect and logical. Almost comforting. I narrowed it down to a train or truck, though I disliked the idea of implicating others. In any case I was a coward, and I often pictured myself holding back at the last moment, my life as a hesitation before death.’

‘In the days that followed I felt as if I were floating above the hole, suspended in air. The ground had disappeared, only the hole remained below me, ready for me to drop back down at the least disturbance. My words meant next to nothing. They were themselves part of the air, a congregation of vapours.’

‘It was as if something in me took all that was new and made it old. Or as if God lowered his lids on all I saw and withdrew. Things died before they grew. No one could live like that, so flat for so long. But here and there I saw new things.’

‘I’d lie in bed thinking of ways to die. So this is what it comes to, I thought, I must be ill. Almost a relief, I thought, to be ill, indisputably ill. Ill. I repeated the word as I imagined ways to die. This is what it comes to, I thought, something in me is ill and it’s taken me over and when that happens this is what happens, this is what it comes to. It’s indisputable, just look. Ill in a dark room. Almost a relief, to have only one thought, one sincere wish. Ill, I must be ill. Almost easier, I thought, now that you’re cornered. Easier to be taken out of yourself, out of all fakery for once, to be ill, indisputably ill. It’s an illness, you see, I’m ill. There’s the death drive and there’s the life force and the life force is weak, the life force is dying, it’s turned into the death drive because I’m ill and now I know I wasn’t lying because all I want is to die and that’s because I’m ill, do you see, I’m ill and I’ve always been more or less ill, this is what it comes down to, it’s fitting and logical. Ill. It’s grown inside me, fed on me and now it’s come to this, now it’s ready, death has ripened in me. It’s invisible, it grows in the dark, in obscurity, but now you can see the fruit of its work, you thought I was lying, now you must see I wasn’t. It grows in the dark until it comes to this and look at me now, full of the will to death, full of the opposite of will, this is what it looks like, now do you see it? It’s an illness, there’s a name for it. Almost a relief that it’s here, that it’s taken me, indisputably, that they were wrong and I was right. See for yourself. Ill. Can you see it? Almost, you can almost see it. It’s indisputable, just look at me, lying in bed thinking of ways to die.’