eighty three

It was one of those fancy dress things. The lionhead on the pillow, the whole inside of my mouth on attention but nothing was clear. ‘So what had they come dressed as? Something I might have found in a metal tin . . . a hardware store . . .  a shirt.’

Striped. Plain. It didn’t matter. It never does. So long as my mouth, my mouth, the deep blue of my mouth . . . but that couldn’t be the case. The dried brown substance too. That stuff was breeding like a baggy shirt with feet poking out and tripled by ten.

It started/subsided. I got the other idea: these kids were in dresses. We were in town, down the side alley off Brick. And their arms too. The sleeves all floppy. No, I don’t think it has a name. One big blank board wounded men from the Great War. Some parents . . . no, they didn’t bother with that place. I suppose it made sense.

The man serving me didn’t have a thumb. Evolution took its course like a lion’s palm. No, it was more like a stump, a strange knob. But then it was my turn to be blindfolded and pushed and (leave?) so that lacking any form of concentration I just stopped and laughed in desperation. I tried to reach my hand out to grab balance, I put my hands onto someone’s head. The place was rusty, you could if you’re the other way . . . no, I wasn’t that fussed to be honest. But you could easily have a nasty accident there. I left with grand commodity. Just look at other people. (y.)

I’d once thought about scrapping ideals altogether, but it’s not where anyone heads on a Sunday night. I was a man being a man. ‘What?’ I thought it was safer to push some guy home. But no, I don’t know what happened, instead I was feeling giddy. Nothing was out of honesty – I knew they were wanting it cut. That I’d beg on the whole nightmare. And after a short rest it stopped spinning.

The hat sucked them in and blew them out via the slicing fingers – he took hold of my hand – and here I was pushed off again. Pain – high pitched and squealing. The door got shut and maybe the sound. I stumbled a bit. Tripped on the rug section of some library that deals with lubrication and easing, and what? – the basic state of being. I mumbled it. I mumbled it. I mumbled it . . . Something appeared without thought – and I’d mumbled it before I’d come. Total pain. My mouth, ‘Good times!’ And someone was holding something frozen just in case . . . but it was colder than that. During the Maybe – something had happened. Last night I could muster, but then it broke, in the bedroom, the chill chasing little thing (-othermic?) I could have gotten something better, but there was that rash all across his arm.

eighty two

I don’t know when last year was because Nembutal and slow heart rate (feeling that you/they might pass out) or something. I never did. (word illegible.)

I had in mind (my hand) Man’s Concept of God. I am wearing a pinky ring like royalty or some sort of thief/priest cut my hair with thinning scissors. Looking better.
First line, quoted “Genesis” In the beginning, etc, to be taken twice daily. Purchase cock ring. Special deal on all pine and coffee, black. Seated in corner with book quote “Genesis” ha ha ha people looking at me.

Don’t laugh when reading.

Leave coffee out (walking) incredible elation.

eighty one

Like a cabaret of days. I dress up more and more. My hours consist of bed and dressing, reading (in character – whatever the character – a maid, a nun,) smoking, reading, reading the days in bed. For hours I hardly eat. I will think about how it is sometimes difficult to eat. I have no desire for food. The tiredness of food. The emptiness of food. Gnash gnash of food. Everything sterile. I sleep. Everything illusion – allusion? – heady of desperation.

I wipe my mouth with bedsheets.

Mornings are spent contemplating. Should I shave? What is the capacity for all change? New razor. Note. Pen. Note. I wipe my mouth with bedsheets.

I have never smoked. Yes, I am aware I told you a lie. Ha ha ha. I am sometimes a smoker when my character becomes a smoker. But I have never truly smoked. I can remember that I didn’t twist my cigarette stub into my vagina because I never did have a vagina even when I was a nun. I am a good nun. Ha ha ha. I wrap myself in bedsheets and abstain from all worldly things. I have a good memory, but I lack obsession.

I sometimes feel that there are metaphors waiting to trick me. Ha ha ha. That is why I sleep as often as I do. I wipe my face with a wet flannel and I rub myself behind my ears. Everything sterile.
Shostakovich is friendly in the hour before lunch. I will gorge myself at lunch out of fear. I do not know if fear is a phenomenon or an actual person. I think Shostakovich must have played the cello, or maybe not, but he was never my friend to begin with.

When it is summertime, the law will take away our bedsheets. We will have one bedsheet between us. We may have less cigarettes, but it depends on all of the decision makers all over the land. I have never been a decision maker, but I once had a letter summonsing me to the court to make real decisions for real people. My mother took care of business. I was promised a new book.

I poke a typewriter. Ha ha ha. Some words become difficult when you don’t know how to spell them. That is why I have learnt how to spell. I am not sure if that was a real decision – learning to spell. Some things are more natural than other things, like my mother, and the birds, and when it rains I run outside in the bedsheet and get myself a cold for days.

I will smoke for two hours and listen to Shostakovich with my fingers in my ears and if I can hear anything I will press my ears harder.
I am told I would hurt myself when I was younger by slamming my head against the wall next to the fireplace. I think it is a psychological thing that children do at that age in order to obtain truth. Everything has been done before on film so sometimes it is not worthwhile being awake. I like to roll my pen between the flat of my palms.

eighty

There was not much else forever onwards, or whatever the phrase. (Sitting.) It would be like throwing an apple into an ocean (here: his thoughts.) Forever onwards. For the most part he’d listened (Hanimex) and observed (also Hanimex.) Distance became creation, or a notion only, of distance. Here he stretched his arms out wide. Here she removed his vest.

Saturday became his day of capture, capturing whatever was beyond him (beyond, to be read as in-front-of.) His camera (recap; Hanimex,) his camera too heavy for his hands. His tripod too heavy for his back. He hadn’t used a tripod in three years. He shot lopsided. Previously distant he’d shot nudes, had had amorous affairs with girls of latter teenage years, had fathered, in the very least, one child of enormous proportions, an ugly and obscene birth reeking (and eking) out in the back room of (someone’s) father’s late jewellery business. Some years distant.

He no longer shot nudes. Had asked the nurses – who had tittered and declined – who had blushed and rushed from his room. Here he stretched his arm out wide, pressed play (Hanimex) and listened to some concerto grosso (big concert) or concerto (concert.)
Everything had changed. Everything was weak. Even his whisky was watered down until it resembled simply water or air or imagination. He drummed his fingers often, except for when he shot (or pissed on the floor beside the toilet) trees, or whatever else was beyond him. The branches were higher now. He often caught his chin in each shoot, hanging and looming, shooting from his chest to get enough power to his fingers to make the release catch click (clck.) Every shot a shadow, every shadow a reason not to shoot.

His happiness came in birds. He’d once kept birds in hotel rooms, window open wide, faeces on the outer wall, feathers in the hallway, dander circling the room on an AC current (summertime.)

He used to write, but hadn’t wrote. Typewriter too cumbersome. Pen (Bic) too small. Pencil too sweaty in his palms. Meals three times a day, toilet breaks, wash, chair, bed, chair, biscuit. (‘Let him sleep another hour’ or, and often: ‘Leave him reclining,’ or, and often: ‘Turn his bloody radio down!’)

But today something different, he felt it now as he awoke. Day of capture, only much more than that.

seventy nine

The illness I became most aware of as a child was my mother’s scotoma brought on by her often occurring, and acutely painful migraines. Pain itself was too abstract for me to hold it in my palms. I’d felt the back of my father’s hand; I’d tripped many many times; I’d even been pinched and punched in the school yard. But pain never spoke to me as much as my mother’s scotoma. I would press my fingers against my eyeballs until my vision went dark. I skirted with blindness until I fell into its abyss for a whole week.
I was bored.
My mother spoke of all the colours she saw. Why did I not see them too? Why did her colours not exist in my eyes? Why did I not see the same shapes that she saw at will? Was it really possible to see the world in grey if you only wished it to happen. I envied my mother’s eyes, just as much as I envied the shape of her waist and my father’s moustache. I imagined patterns floating into view, I pressed harder and harder. Pain was only abstract. Fear did not exist. The only patterns I saw were mutilations, haunting shapes and dead animals. There was a bad air the day I drowned our family cat in the bath. Its legs had become stiff in its attempt to grab hold of the unobtainable glazed bath sides, its claws extending out from their roots, there was a sort of thrashing and a noise, an abstract noise and then nothing but a dead cat. My father said it must have slipped and he took me out to play on the slots whilst my mother suffered her migraine alone in bed. I won a prize: I saw my first shapes.
The biggest indicator, we’ve jumped forward a few years – I’d left home by now – was the indecipherable nature of my actions. I’d become hysterical, but hysterical in a rather masculine sense. My trousers were often down at my ankles. But why worry? I felt anxiety, sure, but how should I know if I felt anxiety as much as the next person? How should I know if a cause was deliberate, or irrational, mistaken, accidental, or simply unavoidable? I had nobody to ask.
About the same time – my late teens – was when I met my first (second?) conquest. I’d been walking home from my day at the library. (I must add that I could not find employment, so my occupation was spent in the town library.) Not to mention my certain dislike for librarians. However, I read books because they were free, and isn’t freedom what we all strive for?
The cat had followed me from one garden to the next. It jumped upon a wall and walked at my side, matching my pace, and flicking its tail straight up into the air. I stopped and looked at this animal, this warm pulse of life. I played with it for a while, enjoying its wet nose as it nuzzled my hand. The street was empty and I took a hold of the cat. I pressed it inside my jacket, and when it squirmed I pressed it just a little harder. I did not have to walk all that far.
I locked the cat inside the spare room – a room totally empty. No bed, no cupboards, nothing. I found the brightest bulb in the house and fixed it into the ceiling above. I switched on the light and left it on all night.
That night I heard the tiniest meowing coming from the spare room. And occasionally I heard a scratching, sometimes a soft padding as the cat crossed between one corner and another. I fell asleep.
That morning I went out to buy cat food. I dished a little onto a saucer and went to sit in the spare room with my new friend. He nuzzled my hand again and ate a whole saucerful of cat food. I called him Pig. His tail was straight up in the air.
A little while later I taped newspaper to the windows and drew the curtains. I didn’t want my neighbours to know about Pig. I didn’t go to the library that day – I had a migraine coming on, and everything in my eyes had started to haunt me.
I must’ve spent the next two or three days in bed. Pig was certainly hungry the next time I found him. His room had begun to smell, the light was too bright for even my own eyes. I couldn’t find any evidence that Pig had used the room as a toilet, but Pig no longer had his tail in the air. There was even a hesitation when I opened the door, his mouth wide to make a sound, but nothing coming forth except for a dull rasp, and even the rasp was inaudible. I switched the light off and left him in total darkness for three days, only visiting him occasionally to leave food. Pig no longer made a sound and his fur had started to fall out.
I must’ve kept Pig in the spare room for almost four weeks, alternating between total darkness and bright light. I fed him only occasionally. My migraines had gotten worse. I once spent a whole night with Pig in the spare room. I took a pillow and a book, but Pig did not come near me. He sat hunched in a corner, now and then jumping to some sort of life to pull at his fur with his tongue and his teeth. Pig never once answered to his name.
After the fourth week, I’d grown bored of Pig. I pressed at his eyeballs and wondered what sort of world he saw. Do cats get migraines? I held him up to the lightbulb, his body limp like a cascade of rags down my arm. There was still life in him, but not much. When I threw him against the wall, I saw the tiniest murmur of life. His left eye had burst open and blood ran down his face, but he still managed to give out a little sneeze. My only consolation to the ordeal was the belief that animals don’t suffer. Animals don’t see the darkness enveloping their vision. Animals don’t understand. Have you ever seen an animal read a book?
The next day I took a hold of Pig and fed him two whole tins of food and fourteen paracetamol tablets, holding back his mouth as though he was a funnel for grain. I kept pushing it all down with my fingers the best that I could, down it went into his throat. His head gave a spasm, his legs splayed and stiffened. His belly made a popping noise. I massaged his neck and made room for more food. I then tied his front paws together with cord, and hung him from the light bulb. I spent an hour or so in the library with a packet of gum.

seventy eight

1

“I threw up all over the coffee table, nobody else was home. I sat in bed with a headache that comes after retching out the innards of your stomach, I don’t even see the connection, I can’t keep paracetamol down. I was plucking out my eyebrows. A man must be forever condemned by the coarseness of the hair on his fingers, a woman may fair better, but not likely.”

 

2

Health is measured by appearance. I am not well. My face feels bruised. Does this constitute meaning? Is this an excuse for my being – this anti-wellbeing? My toes stick out from rotten plimsoles. Where did this feeling come from? I will need a new pair of socks to make me feel better, and let us continue this decadence – a fresh packet of cigarettes. (I’ve never liked anything half opened/half used.) Sharing a packet of cigarettes is like sharing a girl, taking it in turns to feel inside, pulling out your selection, lighting up, laying back. Pride is a disease. I can’t share things like that. I might as well choke on discarded goods, or stick my tongue inside a stagnant canal.

 

3

Fortune has blessed me. I find it amusing that things can grow from something small and helpless into something pretty and usable. There is no irony intended when I exclaim ‘Gosh, how you’ve grown!’ into my conquest’s ear. There is no one easier to fool than the man who does not expect to be fooled, except perhaps for the gentler sex. A few words can go a very long way. A hand can contain hidden excitements, like the smile that hides the true intentions of its master. The facet may shine, but it says nothing of brilliance, that is why virginity is hopeless – it has the worst odour of all, and attracts those with the most sensitive nose.

 

4

We are all the same person. There is never any death, but a continuation of life, we are an unfunny mass tied together with elastic string, bits might fall away, but the whole thing is continuously renewed. The only death is found in extinction and/or clowns.

 

5

At around the close of office hours, she took herself to the park to feed the pigeons and the ducks. She wondered if ducks were nocturnal feeders, but she often saw them during the day. She knew that a paradox of this manner could exist, but she also knew that she could make up words. She understood that Man was barely more than an animal. She understood that Man had somehow had the unfortunate capacity to civilise himself. She did not know the History of Man, or indeed if History could exist in a tangible form. All trials were absurd. She knew that she must not use the phone (I must not even lift it from the receiver), she knew that it did not matter to anyone if she had a headache. (I must never contact my husband during the day.) She was fortunate to have a husband. She did not tell anyone about his premature ejaculation or where it was he would ejaculate, or that he would pick up girls too young to get inside nightclubs. She always knew that there would be a tomorrow. She had seen the 40 milligram packaging more often than she could remember. She knew that everything was her fault.

seventy seven

1

“All of this is illusion. Words aren’t real, words are only themselves of illusion. There is no future in the utterance of mere words. Ideas expressed with words appear like the mirror that can no longer reflect the world. God is the only word that comes close to apprehension. They say that to be your own God is the only way to live, but not even Man is worthy of the title of God.”

2

It has been sixteen months since I last stepped outside. I do not know what I miss the most – I do not know if I have the capacity to miss anything. When everything has been taken away from your reach, there is at first, a moment of intense relaxation. I had not expected this, but then of course it was something that could not last. I became panicked – I don’t believe I had ever experienced panic before. My thoughts raced through encounters. I recollected my sins. I had an overwhelming desire to show myself to the nurses, a complete shaming desire. I would redden in their presence. I could not control my urges. My medication was altered. I had consultation after consultation with men. Always men. I did not see a woman for nearly two months. I complained that it was a basic human right for a man to see a woman, but my complaints disappeared. My medication makes me sleepy. I no longer have desires. They allow me one book a week. I cannot read a single word. Words do not contain meanings for me. I have asked for help – for days I have asked for help. I try to skip my mealtime medication. They now inject me once every three months. I am no longer of a stable mind, but they tell me that my medication is to keep me of a stable mind. I can tell you when it is Thursday, every Thursday.

3

Last week, one of the patients passed away.

4

A male nurse helps to wash my body. They do not allow me to be washed by female nurses. I think the male nurse is homosexual, but I cannot tell. He does not try to touch me, but I have oftentimes caught him looking at me in disgust. I have urges when I see the male nurse, but I think they are a repressed hatred of all mankind or some kind of homophobia that I am unaware of. I no longer have my freedom. I can see the true condition: Futility. Boredom. It is better to repent your sins whilst you still have your freedom. I can only read picture books now. I have a book on St. Anthony that I renew once a week. Nobody else wants to look at pictures of St. Anthony. Everybody else wants to read The Catcher in the Rye, or The Bell Jar, but these books only contain words and nothing else. The only book of words worth reading is the Bible itself.

5

I have to be supervised when I am writing letters. I have nobody to write letters to, but I have complained that it is a basic human right to be able to write a letter, even if that letter is to remain unposted. This does not explain why I have to be supervised when I write letters – I drew pictures of St. Anthony upon the walls in biro when I was supposed to be writing my first letter. My medication was altered and now my hands feel lifeless. Sometimes a male nurse has to feed me. I have dreams of choking to death upon a cupful of semen, but I do not tell anybody this. I wake up coughing and trembling. I think I have a complex, but I no longer recall what the word means. Or its relevance. Everything has become sliced, and I am living out my existence one slice at a time and I hope it kills me.

seventy six

March 12th, 2012:

I wanted to step outside of my usual style of writing and tell you a little bit more about myself. As many of you know, I am a follower of the teachings of Jesus. I wear His thorns on my chest out of a pity for those who choose not to be guided. I carry Your burden, as I carry His burden. I am plagued by Your anguish as I am plagued by His anguish. But more than anything, I give and I believe in love. I believe in the Flesh. I have an ability to touch people. I am consumed with Pride. I rescue people from sadness, from their own perceived nothingness. I say: follow me, let me be your guide. I show them light.

Would you rather happiness? Would you submit your Spirit if I promised you fulfilment?

I have known intimately, three girls, maybe four. The first was fourteen. She hung on my every word. She believed all I said. But in her lazy ways, she made the ultimate mistake. She did not believe that Jesus is the route to Love. She did not believe that all acts of loving lead to Jesus. I can barely speak of this girl, her name fills me with many kinds of anxiety. She was the first I knew of intimately, we made love in her parent’s bed, with her parent’s dog breathing over my arse, it’s languid eyes watching us with some kind of dogged amusement. I would slap that dog on its snout with any opportunity that arose. I used my boot whenever it came near. I made it my subject. It soon knew when to leave us both in privacy. Fourteen years old. The worst kind of whore. A pretty girl with a chafing between her legs.

I rescued my second girl, a self confessed atheist, on her eighteenth birthday. She was filled with stubbornness and hatred. And, as with my pretty fourteen year old, she was filled with a certain juvenile sadness. It didn’t take long to break open her barriers and climb between her thighs. She thought I was delusional. But she was more open to fun than I was. I taught her that we both believed in the same thing – that I did not believe in a God in the same sense that she did not believe in a God. I had a love for Jesus, just as she could love anyone who gave her the attention. I taught her the teachings of Christ. I taught her the power and feeling of love – or, should I say – I gave her the attention she craved. Either way I taught her that her way of questioning things was the right way. I taught her all about the true meaning of life, its purpose. Sex was easy. If I mentioned Nietzsche I knew I could push my fingers that little bit further. She was no prude, but she was the most unintelligent of the three – she had no concept of irony.

My third girl, oh what can I say? She was a girl prone to intoxication – the first time we made love it was far too easy. I started by teaching her the evil in her ways. It is always easier to bed a girl who has a taste for alcohol. But bed is perhaps not the right word – we made love in a parking lot – her dress smeared with semen and oil. I began to pity her understanding of the world, her naïveté. Her passion for the drink. If only she had given herself to Jesus, she would no longer have had the thirst. She had no idea where my fingers had been. She was only sixteen.

March 28th, 2012:

They want me to write words. They want me to choose my words carefully. The first word I ever spoke was tractor.

They are calling me a rapist now. There isn’t any hope once the stigma becomes parasitic. I don’t know which word to call it. Belief is not even considered a true word. (For a description of true words, read my published essay: “I Sat Upon The Face Of Feminism.”) The truest words are ‘Culture’ and ‘Society,’ words that mean nothing and mean everything all at once.

I am Society. We are all of us Society. If you blame Society, you carry the blame on your own back. I don’t know who said that first.

This isn’t even a confession. They want to know how old I was when I had sex with that girl. I think it makes them happier in their own lives if they can find someone who has done something terribly bad. They can go home happier. They can drive their cars happier. They can bring up their children in a great cocoon of happiness, knowing that they will forever be consumed in secular righteousness.

The age of consent varies around the world. Sometimes America is the world. Other times America is not the world. It becomes a story when there is a tale to tell. I can stick my fingers between the legs of a girl in Spain. I can never remember what becomes of my hands after the deed. I become a mess.

Some people find this disgusting.

I consider blame the only evil. I am writing, and I will always write until I become a book. Where will you put your fingers if I lay upon your lap? Never judge. Are you the kind of girl who sticks her nose inside a book? Of course not. But I like the scent of heat on wild animals all the same.

They ask for words. They ponder – What does he mean by this? Why do his fingers twitch so?

There is shame to be found in splitting hairs between one crime and another. I am only full of sin as much as You or He. Where I put my fingers is no worse than where yours have forever been.

Have you seen Theresa in ecstasy? It is what every young girl craves to embody. I like nothing more than to rub my own spit into flushed cheeks. I know what I am, I don’t need reminding of what it is that I am. I carry the stigma with pride.

When confronted by men, I blame my twitching on cigarettes. I am no fool to swallow medication. The fool is he who blames Society and takes a step back to choke on his — or her — own innocence. (There is little difference even at fourteen. One anal canal is just as tight as another, medically speaking.)

All is easier with manicured hands. One thing is always more acceptable over another thing until we are told to think otherwise. Yes, I am aware of my own contradictions. I have never touched a young male. This does not make me homophobic until you tell me otherwise, until you shift my thinking either to the left or to the right, or until I persuade you to choose the path that God defines.

What words should one choose? You do not listen. I gave them all my notes yesterday. I gave them my photographs. I bought postcards with magpies on the facing side. I don’t get visitors. I twitch more often than I used to.

April 7th, 2012:

“Man is caught – on the one hand believing himself to have absolute freedom over his thoughts and decisions, and yet – on the other hand – needing to appear to be thinking the same thoughts as everybody else. The paradox being that there is an essential need in Man to conform in order to obtain freedom.”

If indeed I bruised a girl between her legs at fourteen – poetically or otherwise – it was simply an expression of my liberty. There are two sides to every story: you either choose God, or you choose against God. God forgives your sins no matter what they are. God already sees the absurdity of life and wipes the slate clean. That is why I pity those who do not believe in God – they have no control over life’s absurdities. They are forever lost inside the paradox of what’s right and what’s wrong. There is no right and wrong. There is only life, and in life there is God.

I have now gone seven months without sexual contact of any kind. Yes, there was a fourth girl. Oh, I find it increasingly difficult to feel empowered – even my hands have lost their touch. I began to notice the frailty of my decisions on my last encounter, the girl was struck dumb, I forget her age. What is age anyhow? I forget what they call them – tights or stockings – they seem to be interchangeable these days. I made her say yes. She nodded her head tenderly. She felt different.

seventy five

I want to destroy your faith. I want to destroy everything you know, and everything you hold dear to your existence. I want you to forget yourself. I want to penetrate your very core. I want to make you fear your own thoughts. I want to give you a tiredness that consumes your soul. I want you to forget what it felt like to be happy. And maybe one day you will feel my pain.

In here there is nothing but chaos. I am a plaything. In here I thank Jesus. I am string wrapped tight around flesh wrapped tight around cheekbones. I am distance and unworthiness. In here I am considerate, but out there I am ill received. I try and draw my memories, but my hands do not hold still.

I have become others. I have been torn apart by therapy. I have spouted words until my fountain ran dry. I am only aware of tiredness. I wish to sleep, but I am kept from sleeping. I find tiredness in cups. I find tiredness stitched into the fabric of my clothing. I wash myself with tiredness. When I eat, I eat only of tiredness. There is no waking state, there is only ever tiredness. I have not woken up for five ten fifteen years. Time is like an elastic band, and I have no use for an elastic band.

I am sucking everything through a straw. There are strings inside my mouth. I no longer understand meaning. I can’t fathom the essence of meaning. I have no belief. There can never be belief. There is no such thing as forward. Everything is static. Everything is tired and decaying. The beauty of flowers is that they die. I have scars across my cheekbones. There is nothing extraordinary.

Birds are the only solace. Birds are the only true existence. Birds can escape discord by opening their wings or opening their beaks. Man can only dream of what will never be. Harmony can only exist in delusions. True happiness is found only in its absence.

My food is brought to me on a vacuum formed tray. My food is neither hot nor cold. My food does not warm me. I do not know what taste tastes of. There are strings inside my mouth. Sometimes I feel them inside my throat. I vomit once a day. There is nothing to gain from swallowing pills. I no longer know what food is. I choke on bottled water. The only solace is in birds.

I am fed by girls who spend their evenings intoxicated. My sense of smell is the closest I get to sex. I no longer have desires to move my hands, but they do not hold still all the same. The highlight of my week was when one girl left a spoon at the foot of my bed. I thought I might go sane. The only desire that comes from existence is the knowledge that one day it will become total absence. My fingernails are a nuisance.

Sometimes I remember birds pecking at the pattern in the carpet. I’d always wanted my very own library. Instead I got a birdcage. A very large birdcage. I don’t know what went wrong. I don’t know how to escape.

seventy four

I work for a big calendar, one that’s even bigger than you can imagine. The ceiling is so high I don’t even know where to look sometimes. Nobody knows the days of the week, we lost our ability to process basic time when we consumed hydrogenated fats. I am often in love. She has schizophrenia.

I abandoned religion when everyone else did. It felt good to feel part of the community. I don’t have any friends, but sometimes I talk to people. Most of my life is spent looking at books. I don’t even know how to read any more. My basic fulfilment comes from looking at words and smiling from time to time. I don’t believe in meaning – there is no such thing anymore. A word is only good if it sounds good. Arguments consist of words that sound good.

Sometimes I write words backwards and laugh at the absurdity of creation. Nothing was created by nothing, or was it nothing was created by anything? It isn’t possible for me to understand every idea, so I go with whichever idea sounds most convincing, or the one that only uses words that sound good. I don’t like archaic words such as charity or virtue, those are not good words.

Whenever I read a book I also read another book. I have read more books than Dante read in his whole lifetime. I don’t even know who Dante is, but I know he wrote books. I even have trouble tying my shoelaces, but I know some things about geometry and skincare. I am accustomed to new heights. I am a fan of the normalisation process. Not everything is allowed to be normalised. I was aware the day liberty became an archaic word. We had abandoned its use over a minimal timescale. We were all libertarians until we became aware of the contradiction this had created. Sleeping had become one of the most common illnesses. Alcoholism had ceased to exist because we were not allowed to talk of alcohol in the negative.

My girlfriend makes plastic bottles out of plastic bottles. There is nothing new under the sun. Everything that exists must always have existed. We have always lived in perfection, but we are the only culture that understands the concept of perfection. There is no such thing as sin, because sin is an archaic word and it no longer has any use in today’s society. There are Laws concerning plastics that are difficult understand. Ugly is another archaic word. Not everything has a polar opposite anymore.

Everyone has an allergy to something. My allergy is to bright plastics. There are some pedal bicycles that I cannot use because I lose all sense of co-ordination. I sometimes feel embarrassed but embarrassment is an archaic word linked to pride which is something we have not been allowed to express for many years. There is no such thing as pride because pride gives one a sense of being better than someone else and so the definition cannot exist. Contradiction is a word that we are trying to nullify for the betterment of all peoples on an equal scale.