The gods inhabiting doubt don’t seem to be inclined to show
themselves in manners resembling anything we normally would consider divine or
any purported demonic opposition, but neither do they feign to assume human
garb. What then are these creatures
(though they be not creatures) and how do they inhabit?
We shall begin with an experience i had recently when drunk
in the alleys of Seville, that despicable administrative region of the nation
of a doubtful Slovenia. Nothing had gone
right that day. My father called to
inform me my mother had cancer and would die within three months. My ex-wife called and said she wanted to get remarried. My brother-in-law called from emerg to say my
sister was having a breakdown and was being interrogated by psychiatric interns
with no direct experience of the mind’s stranger choreographies—only textbook
systematizations and rote vocabularies and envied paychecks. And in the wee hours of the early morning i
had resumed a sexual relationship with a woman who was into extispicy, expired
air ventilation and quitting smoking.
Naturally when night came i boozed.
I knew the alleys sufficiently. They turned into each other like deranged
marshmallows. Transactions occurred of a
nature so dubious, so outside the law, that any jurisprudence would have to
entirely reinvent itself to take them into account. By daytime, though, the alleys were
exuberances of commerce—wallets flashing like pedophiles, scarves and cravats
and bootlaces, fractal romanescos and sexy kuritakes and swabs of turducken
terrine with dates and plover eggs and seasoned bustards spilling over coloured
tables, and everything singing with the excess of itself. Near nightfall the shoppers would thin and
disappear and the merchants would then hastily pack up and fold their stalls
and scurry out, as if they were cockroaches and someone had flicked the light
on. A limbo then occurred in which
nothing happened but a silent waiting for the night and its tangled
cultures. It was then i would enter,
inebriated, desperate for respite from the arrows of routine, from the
protocols of opposition.
That week i sought a friend skilled in the arts of such
matters. He lived in a garret off the
Ulica Lutk and mumbled the fragments of sages into broken carafes. His name was lost and i called him
Substantive, as a euphemism and term of endearment and joke, though neither of
us laughed. Interrupted by unhinged
doors and tomblike corridors through which ghosts lolled like dustbunnies, there
were uncountable twisted stairs to his forgotten hovel which he could only
afford by doing free curses for the landlord—long horrible affairs, rife with
decibels and spittle, that terrified those in arrears to steal or prostitute
their daughters or murder, as long as rent was paid. We had met in the theater at the opening
weekend of The Thing, he with
fantasies of doing domestic work at the South Pole, me with a ticket i had
found while recovering my glasses from behind the toilet at a soggy waffle
place near the condemned sanatorium in which Lucia had finally fully lost her
mind a few years prior during that spring in which the blossoms danced like
hesperides and no one got the flu.
Haven’t suffered
enough, he said, after we had settled into Turkish coffees as thick as
madness and he had rearranged the taxidermy specimens so that we could squeeze ourselves
into rough spaces between once loved or beaten pets on lumpy dolorous couches
which seemed to chant in low scratchy voices of springier and firmer days.
What has that got to
do with it?
Haven’t suffered
enough, don’t see them.
What happens when
you’ve suffered enough?
Not there, they’re
inside you—hardly suffered, suffered enough.
The in-betweens, they make them appear.
It’s too easy to blame it on the booze. We all know that at some level alcohol speaks
the truth more ripely, with more imaginative precision and imagistic
exactitude, than the tinny truisms of sobriety.
That’s why we drink. Not to open
legs or forget the whipped horrors of existence or even dance with more limbs
than we thought we had … but to glimpse what is, however shady, veiled and
smelly it might be.
Most truth—the common kinds that cause lukewarm heads to nod
lukewarmly—is like an uncooked head of cauliflower. True and not imperfect in its cruciferous and
fractal glory. Yet it is not the truth
that drives us humans on. Something must
be done to the cauliflower. It must be
chopped and garlic added, maybe a bit of reggiano and olive oil, a plop of
parsley, roasted until hot and golden, eaten to the tunes of Arvo Pärt and
arguments over the attributes that distinguish film from literature or whether
religion and secularism are the same.
Booze does this. Booze is a
cooked and wondrous cauliflower. It
shows us what is there.
So i step into the Sevillan maze, that medley of alleys, drunk
and desperate, eager for truth. The
smell of merchants has begun to dissipate and the air is expectant and stiff. Brick buildings of indeterminate age, their
windows viscous and unopened, sit stolidly on the sidelines, devoid of any
signs of life, as the sun does its daily dance into the grave of the
heavens. There was little discussion of
the alleys in the polite society of Seville.
People talked of bargains, of having whittled the price of some
haberdasher down to something one could boast about. They talked of under-ripe avocados and fuzzy
fungi and the latest lace. They talked
of days. They talked of sun-sanctioned
fiscal-driven business-blessed products, and then they stopped, like clams, and
spoke of happy exhibitions in galleries, and maybe the price of theater tickets
and the increasing quantity and quality of weddings and, if efficacious, one or
two of the deceased. The alleys i am
entering are entered more than spoken of, and those of us who enter aren’t
normally invited to the parties of Seville.
I saw him next under the destitution of a full moon in the
smoky geometries of an undecided evening by a polluted creek on the outskirts
of love. Jackalopes, squirradgers,
wombines, elephaffes, pysons, donmels, vulphins, and raphonamites lurked in the
fuliginous night, gnawing on each other.
He was in the crook of a tree, screaming at unseen enemies, in a
loincloth, stuffed with vatic wisdoms. I
threw some pinecones, drawing his ire and attention.
le bruit des cabarets
la fange des trottoirs! verfremdungseffekt! petite madeleine! anosognosia! inter
alia sophrosune sub-iectum! une riche et inutile survivance! wie es auch sie
das leben es ist gut! reines bewusstsein! die schwärmerei!
ho hum! l’éphémère ébloui vole vers toi
chandelle crépite flambe et dit bénissons ce flambeau! ertrinken! versinken!
unbewußt! Höchste! Lust!
He howled like a cloven moon, ripped off his loincloth
revealing an erection which began spouting into the skies an aurora borealis of
semen, greens and reds and blues of holy sperm, and threw trees and vivisected
animals onto the earth like a crazed and animate piñata and i ran back to
Seville, to my small apartment, and wept.
Upon his first encounter, Augustine had called them lahars
of confusion, and returned to them to castrate himself over a pagan font in 392,
swollen with repentance, committed to the plank of clarity, spilling the hideous
blood of his testes, those thick and questing hydras, in exchange for the
aseptic blood of God, returning to Hippo, never to tread again on Seville’s
miasmic earth, never to look back at those purple indulgences, that tumescent
sin. In 1244 Aquinas, smitten with his
vocation, ripe with holy passion, slit them off with a broken wine bottle and
screamed the names of God in Spanish, which he did not know. In 1119 Abelard, bereft less of Héloïse than
of himself, sought the alleys with a butcher knife and did the deed. Origen, apophatic and pulsing with the cries
of Jesus, began the tradition in 209 when, flexible before the Lord and elastic
with righteousness, he arced his body and bit them off—oh snake that devours! oh
sacred sacrifice of purity! oh love!
In 1858 Baudelaire wandered in without shame or pity and
lopped off the sac of a Portuguese sailor while in very congress with a
corpulent Sevillan whore who smelled of turmeric and myrrh. In 1985 Edmond Jabès, little known to
history, having trekked across the desert to the mirage of questions and drank
his fill, snipped them off with sheep shears and didn’t weep and died within
seven years. These are the records of
castrations of the alleys of Seville in the name of the western gods and under
the blankness of a blackened sun.
So i enter them, booze in my sex, a member neither of the
holy nor unholy orders, neither tepid nor a scholar nor a citizen of anything
resembling knowledge. Did not Margeurite
Porete write, “Are they not a miracle of an architectural prose, musical
without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical
stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of
consciousness, an intersecting of myriad relations?”? Was it not Julian of Norwich who said to a
budding anchoress, “Have they not within them less the mirrors we are seeking
and more the labyrinths that are lost?”?
Signage is absent, the forks and interstices are wayward and seem to shift with each visit. Like Habana, without cars or people and of
widths only allowing two fattish people to pass while gently melding. But there are people. Yet not in any normal sense. One sets one’s constructed personhood aside
as one enters, and becomes a person of the alleys, an unfamiliar, experiencing
by not experiencing, feeling the discarded subjectivities that pass as long and
loosened hair, like fallen rain.
The nights melt the alleys down to a single spot that, like
a mad tuba, starts all of the heart and all of the soul vibrating. But no, this
uniformity of black is not the most beautiful hour. It is only the final chord of night, when the
vague and temporary citizens of the alleys have forgotten why they entered, in
the deepest pangs of twilight, taking every shade to the zenith of life that,
like the fortissimo of a great orchestra, is both compelled and allowed by the
alleys to ring out. Then one sees, though
in an instant, though one forever doubts and though one knows most deeply, what
one has come to see.
I finally found him in his laboratory in the forbidden
districts of a simulated CERN, wearing only a dirty labcoat and mumbling in
languages i did not know.
was scrawled on a whiteboard and he jumped from testtube to
marker to vodka to testtube like a bonobo between lovers. I sat for what may have been hours,
half-watching, shifting between dream and what is ostensibly reality, while he
bounced around and scrawled and drank and yelped. I found him next to me, pawing my leg.
There, finished.
Finished? What’s
finished?
Suffering formula.
You’ve solved
suffering?
Solved itself.
It’s over?
Always does.
We shall begin with an experience i had recently when drunk
in the alleys of Seville, and we shall end there also. For i accidentally found myself at a soiree
of a Mrs. Bimble B. L. Bomble, of 382 Rue de la Luna in the Celestetta
District, not far from Nomz Bar, an absinthe haunt of mine. Placing myself innocuously in a corner,
slurping aquavit like San Pellegrino, i forced myself to listen to the
conversations.
You’ve heard that
Alyson’s son received the scholarship?
It was not unexpected.
How is Frederik taking
the news?
Naturally, he is
upset. He can’t see past what he can’t
help but feel as a betrayal.
Of course. He should take a trip, go to India or
something. Forget about things.
The storm in the
Pyrenees … do you know the total damage?
In the billions,
now. Over 3,000 dead.
Horrible.
Dr. Vertenvoken’s
recent book—what a masterpiece!
I hate to say it, but
I wasn’t that impressed.
Oh really! Do tell.
While I appreciated
the textures of its plot, the typically finely drawn characters, I found its
sense of irony overblown, its passions pretentious, its climax
unrealistic. Too much like Flight of
Magenta really, a bit of a waste of paper.
Oh Henri, you’re too
harsh as usual!
The truth isn’t always
pleasant dear.
She’ll die of it.
I think so too.
Soon. She’ll die of it soon.
All the better.
We’ve had enough.
She’s gone too far.
It’s all anyone can
take.
You know what they say
… what you reap is …
What you sow. It’s so true.
His best work is from
his final 10 years.
Unusual.
A late bloomer they
say.
What matters is the
product. Life follows its own schedule.
Magnug is doing well.
Far better than
expected.
Do you think it’s time
to sell?
I’d wait a week, see
how Bryzon performs.
Ah, you always were a savvy
one Vasiliy, a savvy one. I like the way
you think.
It’s served me well, I
have to say.
An asset to our kind,
you truly are, an asset to our kind.
I think we’ve finally
found one!
I’m so happy for you!
Who?
Pierre Lemish. He actually played once at Wimbledon!
Really!
Didn’t place. And I’m sure he uses the fact to bump his
fees up. But the twins love him.
It’s been such a
journey for you.
She heard it from
Seeba and then heard from Fransi but didn’t put two and two together and when
she found out … !
I pushed my way into the middle of the crowded room, raised
my hand and yelled, Friends! The room hushed. I am
not a stranger to Seville but i am a stranger to these gatherings. I have been in the corner—that one (i
said, pointing)—listening to your … your
… communication. I have heard you talk
of awards and death and charts and justice and art and the gamblings of the privileged
and tennis teachers for one’s children. Most
curiously, i’ve heard no one mention what is central to Seville, what grounds
and circumscribes your lives and talkings—the alleys, their effects and
architecture, the society and business that transpires there at night.
The room grew quieter.
The alcohol stood still. Ginoo Alabos,
debonair musician and member of the professional avant garde, a respected
professor and member of the guilds, drawing his recent tour of Hungary on Daw Jia’s
lovely naked forearm, stopped and frowned.
I am a frequenter of
those alleys. I have sought God in its garbled
corridors and madness in its trampled air. Yes! God! God who is dead and yet never dies!
The god who is gods and no-god and no-gods and none and all and neither. I have sought that which cannot be found and
can be known only when it is not known.
I have sought the annihilation of myself in order to find life. I have sought to see the possibility of
repairing the deep injustice of the divorce of the sacred and the profane, that
life is still possible for the human. I
wish to share with you the occurrences of my most recent visit, i wish to speak
of the blood on which we walk … the grammar of our walking. I do not know if i am mad. I do not know if the alleys are real. I do not know what i have seen, I do not know
if i have seen it, i do not know …
… We have heard all
this before, Encik Mllad, a Senior Civil Servant in the Carlosian regime,
interrupted. The architecture in
question, since it has been mentioned, is being sealed. Each year, fewer enter, even fewer emerge,
the portals of ingress diminish, the doors of egress are closed.
There is no escape, said Zonjë Tsis. Things change.
The Councils decree it,
said Gospodin Wǣs-Wǣs. It is the only way to progress democracy.
The Ministers have approved it, said Ssi
Sui G.
The remaining Monarchs
have blessed it, said Whaea Wei. We
must let life take its course.
The International Bodies have confirmed it,
said Mevrouw Vilipa. Its time is done.
The astrological
charts don’t deny it, said Seeydi Habibubad.
The computers compute it.
The scientists
validate it.
The therapists, psychologists,
general practitioners, specialists, neurologists, psychiatrists—with the full
support of their attendant lawyers and accountants and lovers and children and
masseuses and nannies and poodles and customer service representatives—systematize
it and erect a program of wellness to achieve it.
The scholars profunditize it.
The artists sacralise it.
The tweeters and bloggers blab it.
The …
They didn’t try to stop me as i left or seem to notice i had
gone. No one followed me as i departed
the Celestetta District and no one mentioned my having had appeared. Daw Jia’s forearm gratefully recovered the soft
map of Ginoo Alabos’s Hungary and Vertenvoken’s oeuvre continued to be explored
in tones not unreminiscent of reminiscings of reminiscings. No one found the testicles of an unnamed
diplomat. It wasn’t reported, the police
knew nothing. I went to seek my friend
but he was nowhere and so i left Seville and crossed the old-fashioned way, on
a ship, to New York, where I got a job as a night waiter at L’express and found
a girlfriend and went to movies and made up stories of a former life.
So gods inhabit doubt through suffering, and suffering lives
in the inebriated alleys of truth. This
is what i discovered in the nights of Seville, that despicable administrative
region of the nation of a doubtful Slovenia, with the aid of alcohol and a man
whose name is lost.
