i made a bed for myself of books and slept on
it. it was 3 meters high and 2 meters wide and 2 meters long and i used
no
sheets but slept on the books directly. i built a staircase of books to climb
up and i learned to influence my dreams by the placement and relation of books,
their proximity to different parts of my body. i let no one see my bed and no
one slept with me for i had become tired of love.
i no longer read. after decades of voracious
reading, after
being overcome by books so much the world in its dimensionality
became ugly, clichéd, with neither grace nor vision, human society a risible
heap of battling bugs insanely proclaiming its grandeur and supremacy, i
stopped. i had lost the ability to absorb books through sight and reason,
through the act of cognitively and imaginatively interpreting text – these
weary servants of a wearier culture, of a sickened literacy. i needed a
different way to bring books inside me, i wanted a new relation with them. what
better way than having full bodily contact and absorbing them more directly,
during sleep. for the best books are written as though in a dream and surely
the best way to read them is to take them in through our skin as we’re
dreaming. using our cognitive capacities while we’re awake is an obviously
inferior method, a legacy from the primitive age of knowledge, and i grew
excited again about encountering my favourite books in ways i never had before.
i dreamt new dreams – sprawling
phantasmagoria. colours rewired and dripping down architectures that redefined
science. narratives so disturbing, coherent, irrational, seductive i woke up
with the top layer of books drenched and would have to carefully dry the
affected volumes out.
i began building a house of books to house my
bed. a modest affair. bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, a common
area for eating and hanging out and working, a sunroom for whatever. everything
of books. the sinks, toilet, bathtub, furniture, trinkets and decorations,
bookshelves. books are all.
in time – the reader will have expected it –
i became a book.
like gregor. i lived by myself so there was no external drama.
i lived grounded in the totality of books so there was no internal drama. there was no story. this is the story.
