Lars Iyer's Blog, page 80

We rub our bellies with our hands and then pat the tops of our heads. Then we pat our bellies and rub the tops of our heads. This is what our Edinburgh friend (W.’s Edinburgh friend) does when he’s stalled in thought, W. says.

Our minds are blank. We sit back in our chairs. We stretch our arms, then our legs. W. yawns and then I yawn. W. gets up and goes to the loo, and then I get up and go to the loo. Should we get something else to drink?, I wonder. Nothing else! We’re here to think, not drink, W. says.

We pause to finish the dregs of our pints and look around the bar. Do they sell pork scratchings?, we wonder. W. sends me to the bar to ask about pork scratchings. – ‘Fuck off and let me think’, he says.

Then another dream, where once again, I was preternaturally wise. Where once again, I had all the answers. A black sky. Animal cries. Chimp whoops, in the distance. Monkeys throwing their faeces about.  ... 

‘What will people look like, at the end of time?’, W. asked me. They'll look like us, I told him, but with browner teeth. – ‘What will people talk about, at the end of time?’ They'll talk like us, but with more cock jokes, I told him. What will people wear, at the end of time?, W. asked. They'll dress like us, I told him, but in blousier shirts.

W. wants to see how it all ends, he says. He wants to see how it will all turn out. But this is how it ends: him on a train, travelling with an idiot. This is how it will all turn out ...

We’re growing old, W. says. Our eyes are dulling and our hair is greying. Even my eyes, the one who he took as a protégé! Even my hair!

What is it that keeps us from cutting our throats?, W. wonders. Why don’t we book ourselves into one of those Swiss suicide clinics?

W. dreams that one day thought will ennoble him, he says, that it will touch him on both shoulders with its sword. Arise, Sir W., thought will say. Arise, philosopher.

A thinker should dress for thought, W. says. He’s lucky, because Sal dresses him.

A man should be judged by his shoes, W. says. By his shoes and by his haircut, his top and his tail.

Has it really come to this?, W. wonders. It has. Is it going to get any worse? Much worse. This is only the beginning. He feels like a Marie Antoinette being led out to the chopping-block, he says. He feels like Joan of Arc being bound to the stake.

When's the blow going to come? When are the flames going to leap up and surround him? It'll be a relief after everything that's happened, W. says. The horror of uncertainty will come to an end. The horror of not knowing how much further down I will lead him.

For where are we going? Downwards, that much is obvious. Down — and out — that, too, is obvious. We've long since left all friendly terrain. We've long since left the last human house behind. We're in the wilderness now, W. says, mapless and unsure.

Somerset House. They put up an ice-rink here at Christmas, W. says. We should come here to skate. It would be like Kafka and Brod on the frozen lakes of Prague. He can see them in his mind's eye, W. says: skating together, two friends, talking literature, talking writing. Skating and with arms linked with Oskar Baum, their blind friend, out with them on the frozen lake to feel the wind on his face ...

And now we imagine Blanchot and Levinas, out skating on some Strasbourg lake, talking philosophy, talking Heidegger, arms linked ... And, better still, Blanchot and Bataille, out skating in the winter of 1940, just after they they met. Blanchot and Bataille skating, scarves round their throats, talking politics, talking literature in an occupied France ... 

Something was supposed to happen, W. says, as we watch the chests of the sleeping postgraduates rising and falling. But nothing happened. Someone was supposed to take notice, W. says, as the postgraduates sigh in their sleep. But no one noticed.