Notes from a Room

I’ve already tamed you, haven’t I? You almost admire the rioters, don’t you? What would you do then, tell me. Thought not. You can’t even get rid of me, let alone any of those rightwing fucks you hate so much. We were forced back into our own hole as soon as we tried to stick our head up, weren’t we? We tried again from time to time, but it was like a hit-the-mole game, wasn’t it? And now we’re stuck with our own little hit-the-mole game.

God is the answer, we agree, the only possible answer. But to even approach God we’d have to go beyond each other, beyond our constant warring. To be with God we’d have to become something quite different: we’d have to become God himself. But God for us can only be incomprehensibility. To be with God we’d have to burst out of our skin altogether, together. We can’t begin to do this on our own, we’d have to rely entirely on God. But for us God can only mean our lack of God, unless he were to pull us out of ourselves, out of our dying skin and into himself, something we prevent every minute of every day.

Your blind pale face below the surface, just beneath my reflection. Open your eyes, wake up. You’re asleep, submerged, your life is a dream. If it weren’t for me, for my gaze, you’d float away, your back to the sky, hair and limbs adrift in the current… And if it weren’t for you? I’d float off too, into the air, and take up with someone else, go and raise some other rootless semi-spirit.

Saturday. You sleep. You sit in front of the screen. Nothing, as usual. But the onus isn’t on you to insert yourself into the world, to make your mark. Don’t listen to me. But you have to, I’m the one who makes you. Open your notebook. Nothing. It’s laughable. But are we laughing? Sit up straight. You have to. But maybe there’s a kind of writing, or being, that exists with or alongside this nothingness that greets you every morning, in every room. Something out of nothing, nothing out of something.