Transcript from sometime in the future. Location unknown. Names redacted.
Q.
A. There is a stress in the act, the needle before injection, finger on the trigger, that moment before the moment, that irresistible instant, your moth into the flame moment. I know no other way to explain it. The desire for destruction becomes sexual. Consummation no longer a choice. You become actor, not director, not writer. And though you know you should not, you know you can't not. You dive with smile into the empty pool, your brain and teeth shattered to join the shards of your psyche. Now is that fucking seductive or what?
Q.
A. Don't ask questions you can't understand.
Q.
A. Forget it. (pause) Just don't do it again. (pause) Ever.
Q.
A. I'm paying you to listen, not talk. You're on my time. My dime. I don't need your words. Got too many of my own. (laughs) That's funny (face straight).
Q.
A. Good. I like a good understanding. Like butter melting on my toast.
Q.
A. The pull is biological, like the flower to the sun. The process is not of thought. And you realize that what you are is more than thought (there is a stare and a pause here); assuming, of course, you ever thought you were just thought in the first place. Anyway, you feel occupied. That something is living inside of you. Something dark. Something that no thinking can find. You know it from the shadows, never directly. A tail chased but never caught. Round and round you go. The pain is such that you believe only greater pain, more pain can extinguish the pain at hand. So you replace one pain with another and then another, the chase, seeking relief, or so your mind tells you, but, bullshite aside, the pain is an end in itself. You feed it, willingly. As I said, seductive is the power. Electrifying at times.
Q.
A. I don't know. I suppose it is like ghost hunting. Your pain is the cry. The cry into the darkness. Not a plead for help--don't ever believe that nonsense. The cry is for truth. The truth of pain. Understand?
Q.
A. Think of it this way. I seek, what you might call the other side of the coin, not for coin's sake. You see? No? Damn. You see, He never answers. The great Silence, he is. But something, call it the pain, demands I double check. And since My Father is absent, silence, I seek the Great Antipode.
Q.
A. This is not rocket science. If I find one, I can posit the other. That's one theory.
Q.
A. Shame.
Q.
A. To shame The Father. So I destroy, create chaos, take the Image and prostitute it, no, desecrate it, into the nether, into that silent darkness, the cry, the challenge, the in-your-face fuck you.
Q.
A (roiling laughter) Are you serious?
Q.
A. No.
Q.
A. So yes, like the tail, we are back to the beginning. In pain is life. No life, no pain. So, perhaps, this is my way of living, of knowing I am alive, of feeling the most intense life I know. An end in itself, or so it seems.
Q.
A. You are asking the wrong question.
Q.
A. Why the fuck I still come here.
__________
Q.
A. Death is not the problem. Have you not heard anything I've said? It's not death. It's life. Not the life you think you know, not the life we talk about with wife, kids, home and all the rest, I'm talking about life with a capital L. I'm talking about the life that animates your heart, digests your food, shuttles off your waste. Do you hear me? That life. That life that chooses when you stay and when you go. That life that operates on its own time; has its own agenda.
Q.
A. Okay, let me paint the picture. You live your entire life, saintly, let's say. You live long, one partner, many children, blessings beyond measure. Then let's say one day, you have a little health issue. You can't talk, you can't walk and it is not certain you can even see. You live in a bed. Someone else wipes your butt, sees every private detail of your old, tired, sagging sack of a body, prodding and poking you at will, touching and seeing whatever, whenever they want. You shit yourself. You piss yourself. You eat the mush they deem to feed you, day after day after day. You are a prisoner in your own body; your dirty, smelly bed your cell, your closest family, the guards. You are subjected to mindless TV. And baby talk. You receive no stimulation. You can't read. No one reads to you. You haven't seen the news in more than a year. The touch of a book is alien. The taste of solid food a distance memory. Music is not played. Life. Right. Life wants to live. This is your precious life. Imagine no conversation. No one talks to you because you can't talk back. So you have no conversation. No intellectual exchange. None. You are not in a coma. But you are paralyzed and you can see, somewhat, but no one bothers to check your vision or put on your glasses. In fact, truth be known, no one expects you to live much longer and you are not seen as a person, but rather a necessary, obligatory burden. You lose your humanity, but, and keep this in mind, you are no less alive. Right? Life. But here is the thing, that conceptual universe we create, now, in this instance, reveals the very separation of little life and big Life. In this universe, who you are is who you were--people look away, afraid of losing the memory they have in exchange of the life now before them. A memory. A living memory, not a living person, a living mem-o-ry. No new memories to be made. Think about that for a second--alive without the ability to be anything other than a memory to others. You are just a heart beating, a stomach digesting, an anus that occasionally can still close after it opens. And unlike a coma, you can see and hear it all. Now you tell me death is the problem.
Q.
A. Yes, I'm aware of the dissonance.
A. Death is not the problem. Have you not heard anything I've said? It's not death. It's life. Not the life you think you know, not the life we talk about with wife, kids, home and all the rest, I'm talking about life with a capital L. I'm talking about the life that animates your heart, digests your food, shuttles off your waste. Do you hear me? That life. That life that chooses when you stay and when you go. That life that operates on its own time; has its own agenda.
Q.
A. Okay, let me paint the picture. You live your entire life, saintly, let's say. You live long, one partner, many children, blessings beyond measure. Then let's say one day, you have a little health issue. You can't talk, you can't walk and it is not certain you can even see. You live in a bed. Someone else wipes your butt, sees every private detail of your old, tired, sagging sack of a body, prodding and poking you at will, touching and seeing whatever, whenever they want. You shit yourself. You piss yourself. You eat the mush they deem to feed you, day after day after day. You are a prisoner in your own body; your dirty, smelly bed your cell, your closest family, the guards. You are subjected to mindless TV. And baby talk. You receive no stimulation. You can't read. No one reads to you. You haven't seen the news in more than a year. The touch of a book is alien. The taste of solid food a distance memory. Music is not played. Life. Right. Life wants to live. This is your precious life. Imagine no conversation. No one talks to you because you can't talk back. So you have no conversation. No intellectual exchange. None. You are not in a coma. But you are paralyzed and you can see, somewhat, but no one bothers to check your vision or put on your glasses. In fact, truth be known, no one expects you to live much longer and you are not seen as a person, but rather a necessary, obligatory burden. You lose your humanity, but, and keep this in mind, you are no less alive. Right? Life. But here is the thing, that conceptual universe we create, now, in this instance, reveals the very separation of little life and big Life. In this universe, who you are is who you were--people look away, afraid of losing the memory they have in exchange of the life now before them. A memory. A living memory, not a living person, a living mem-o-ry. No new memories to be made. Think about that for a second--alive without the ability to be anything other than a memory to others. You are just a heart beating, a stomach digesting, an anus that occasionally can still close after it opens. And unlike a coma, you can see and hear it all. Now you tell me death is the problem.
Q.
A. Yes, I'm aware of the dissonance.
4 comments:
Firstly, I am surprised that there are only five EE chapters, were I to guess, I would have said there were seven or eight and have surmised this must be for the fact of their vastness and influence. The EE chapters linger indefinitely, that is to say still, first to last, something said within will pose as question as it returns to the forefront without a reminder, out of the blue, to be held up to the light for a while as a slightly different possibility begins revealing itself within.
Not knowing precisely how to go about explaining, nor even if it matters in a comment worthy sense, I nevertheless rely again on abecedarian description here to say that the main thought/feeling I have when reading is that this is the carrot to my donkey, :-D, and it isn't because, I hasten to add while not being entirely sure, there is a lack of understanding, but rather it is time versus scope in the sense of there being a world to explore behind each articulation, yet akin to something that you wrote within, though the current asks that one remains, though one knows that the only way to finish is to stay, finish the exploration, finish the thought begun as one reads, finish the response, define perception and respond in full, of mind, of heart, one cannot not read on, and so there is a sense, throughout, at the end and beyond, of having relinquished one part in favour of the next, of having done this continually throughout. One could read again, could be the advice given, only reading again, or again and again, the same thing happens, with the sense that were one to jump straight into the, replacing World with ocean, of a single part, one might be there indefinitely and that is the true reason why it is necessary to move on.
Always, and in the EE chapters perhaps especially, for the openendedness that occurs (as described above) your what I have decided long ago to refer to as simplicity as it relates to description is prominent indeed, this may end up being a comment where nothing makes sense to anyone other than myself or where I seem to be skating around the issue so to speak, but sense aside I would define your descriptive talents as wordless, wordless pertaining to dimension, continually within your writing as one reads of love, of compassion, of concepts and subjects and better-words-that-those, you are beyond language, beyond words, trying to recall some of those technical terms from literature classes Metonymy and Synecdoche come to mind, but I do like those much-used terms and would say instead that you have a very special knack for honing in on the most essential part of a thing, a special talent for knowing just where the bridges of understanding lie so to speak, or to be even more simple, and as I write this I have in my mind the more frequent example of Love (as it features within your story), of show and not tell, of knowing that within the reader, within others, there is a heart that you can touch, of knowing how to do that, in the deepest way, a direct line, heart to heart, and it isn't that your words do not delight the mind, you do that unlike any other writer that I have known, but the core of a chapter you imprint upon our core. And this is the point where layman perhaps turns to cliché, but then again we all know the long journey taken by a clichéd expression to become just that is praiseworthy.:) ..Best call that part A, so that I can begin again.
Reading for example this part your brain and teeth shattered to join the shards of your psyche. Now is that fucking seductive or what? there is what I can only describe as an eruption, of volcanic proportions no less, of delight, I swear I am just an iota away from drooling all over the front of my shirt at the sonance from shattered through to seductive, swear too, as though they cannot help themselves as they pass through Perception that they are travolta-ing all over psychedelically illuminated floor tiles being generated with each new step. I would giggle at my own phrasing here were I not entirely serious. You become actor, not director, not writer. That sentence as it stands in it's entirety, I just want to say that I love, and then I think about how there can be a million different nuances to the reasons why we love a thing, or a someone, and feel pretty certain that I could were I less chaotic, less consumed, when affected by something, that I could were I to sit with nothing else but this sentence, paper and a pencil in a quiet room list a million different reasons why I do. The first couple of sentences triggered the spiel above about simplicity. And the rest, let's just roll it in wow and remember then that this is still yet mostly the language, the choices, the expression, which to put it another way is the mere beginning. The basics, the lead off to the experience, for it is an experience, of reading this chapter.
I can see that I am as yet nowhere near what my intentions were to say when I began commenting, slipping and sliding down the side of the mountainous experience and even as I start to approach, the words still way up ahead of where I sit within the chapter as these words are being typed, I honestly, truly know not how I would ever begin to describe the wow of all the imagery, of all the emotion that you evoke with your picture painting in the last paragraph. And it may very well be the cowardly thing to do, I am more than willing to admit to that, but I wonder should I dive in, would I be lost, and worse, would I ever be able to write a comment for the chapters below. Beyond, would be my encompassing comment, beyond where one would go, would like to go, beyond expressive, beyond authentic, beyond creation, beyond naked. LOL I just thought of a music video while attempting to find words, Rock DJ by Robbie Williams of all things, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmYC9iL_6dU), I think perhaps you will see what I mean with one particular part of this video, I hope that you will and with that I will move down a post.
Beyond brilliant.
Watching the video after I posted the link, had forgotten quite how grotesque it was, but my reason for posting the link remains, which was the peeling of layers.
I feel as a blind sculptor and you show me what my hands have created. I swear to Janus the chapters look and feel different after reading your comments. In some way I cannot explain, you take, if for a moment, the editorial plank from my eye and I am able to see from just off center as one can see a dim star by looking to the side, and like that star, when I look dead-on, like magic, it disappears. So when I say I am blind and when I say through your comments I can see, the metaphor slips away. If I can think of a better way to explain what you give me in your comments, I'll post it. Until then, thank you my dearest Sweetest One. :-)
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