The View from Here
There's Sprog's homework to "help with", i.e. to do. (I live in a "Homework Culture" a sinister nationwide conspiracy to enable people to do each others' homework with impunity). But I can hardly move a limb. I am sprawled on a torn leather sofa, with stuffing bursting out of the tears, one foot hooked over the staircase railing, the other floorbound, arms thrown backwards from the angular corners of a stretched ribcage, trying to gulp in the extra oxygen I would need to reverse the sleepward drift. "Wait," I say. "Wait..."
The way of dying I seem to have chosen does not leave any room for dignity. As things go, I will wheeze more, struggle more, swear more as I fail to negotiate obstacles with my grotesque bunions and failing coordination. I will forget more and more of my eminently forgettable life, finally forgetting how and why I came to be here, in this strange place, surrounded by strange people to whom I am a defective mod con, at once a necessity and a liability, anyway an eyesore. I will find mental lucidity less and less accessible, and make my peace with the stuttering cacophony of rude random conceptual noises that my brain dissolves into: I will continue to wonder at my strangely preserved ability to go through the motions at work, but even these motions will begin to break down and betray me. One day I will be called into an office and told I am no further use to anyone. Then, I will yearn to hang myself from a beam, but find myself unable to. I shall lie down and wait for death, eating little, shouting at everyone, probably weeping when alone, which will be most of the time, at my own behest.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Time ago, I had a life plan in which, for the sake of symmetry, I had a date with a rope in an unused building in Segovia. I would finish myself off, when the time came, in the same place where, at the age of 20, I had first discovered myself. It would be a tidy round-trip return to oblivion, like something in an allegorical novel written by a bureaucrat. Before it happened, I would drain life to the dregs. Not "life", obviously, but the very small, limited and fleeting subset of life experiences my genes are configured to allow me to have. It was a canny plan. Such thoughts of death, of a sea of peace just over the solitary-confinement horizon, have accompanied me throughout life with the fidelity of a guardian angel. I could not have wished for a more faithful companion.
It's hard to explain, but in spite of appearances, I am happy. Letting go of ambition, of the expectation of survival beyond next week, letting go of any desire to know the universe, allows you to hover over and examine all that you really are, stripped of the hopes and fears. You find you are not noble, not pure, not civilised. You are an ugly, botched luggage-rack of palpitating organs. You would be easy to describe, if only there were serviceable names for the few simple components that constitute you. But equally, you are not guilty of anything. You are startlingly deterministic (though you have, practically, to be you to know what determines you). You are not guilty, and the black dog has lost your scent. You are out of danger. Plus, you have found a world. How could you not be happy?
The way of dying I seem to have chosen does not leave any room for dignity. As things go, I will wheeze more, struggle more, swear more as I fail to negotiate obstacles with my grotesque bunions and failing coordination. I will forget more and more of my eminently forgettable life, finally forgetting how and why I came to be here, in this strange place, surrounded by strange people to whom I am a defective mod con, at once a necessity and a liability, anyway an eyesore. I will find mental lucidity less and less accessible, and make my peace with the stuttering cacophony of rude random conceptual noises that my brain dissolves into: I will continue to wonder at my strangely preserved ability to go through the motions at work, but even these motions will begin to break down and betray me. One day I will be called into an office and told I am no further use to anyone. Then, I will yearn to hang myself from a beam, but find myself unable to. I shall lie down and wait for death, eating little, shouting at everyone, probably weeping when alone, which will be most of the time, at my own behest.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Time ago, I had a life plan in which, for the sake of symmetry, I had a date with a rope in an unused building in Segovia. I would finish myself off, when the time came, in the same place where, at the age of 20, I had first discovered myself. It would be a tidy round-trip return to oblivion, like something in an allegorical novel written by a bureaucrat. Before it happened, I would drain life to the dregs. Not "life", obviously, but the very small, limited and fleeting subset of life experiences my genes are configured to allow me to have. It was a canny plan. Such thoughts of death, of a sea of peace just over the solitary-confinement horizon, have accompanied me throughout life with the fidelity of a guardian angel. I could not have wished for a more faithful companion.
It's hard to explain, but in spite of appearances, I am happy. Letting go of ambition, of the expectation of survival beyond next week, letting go of any desire to know the universe, allows you to hover over and examine all that you really are, stripped of the hopes and fears. You find you are not noble, not pure, not civilised. You are an ugly, botched luggage-rack of palpitating organs. You would be easy to describe, if only there were serviceable names for the few simple components that constitute you. But equally, you are not guilty of anything. You are startlingly deterministic (though you have, practically, to be you to know what determines you). You are not guilty, and the black dog has lost your scent. You are out of danger. Plus, you have found a world. How could you not be happy?
Comments
Post a Comment