“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
I am a sick man, and I’m getting sicker.
This sickness grows with pain inside my chest.
While growing by its sole intrinsic manner,
it gears my brain so strangely from within.
Amusingly it is indeed, and painful.
In the odd confluence of these eerie days
I feel like a horse that’s wounded by its running,
and each step makes my breathing pleasureless.
I go, I leave, I pass, I keep on passing.
The glim of shaky lights makes things all right.
Same way you read your news in daily mail,
and suddenly, you’re expert in this sage.
Yet you’re not laughing – disregard the grief,
as laughing may be done in solitude
on one condition - act so of free will,
not in a small extent with a yellow roof.
Have mentioned I that I am getting sicker?
My heart is ill, same may be with my mind.
Forsaken Gadfly’s duty was inflicted
in a matching manner by the omni-god.
Can one create a single thing from nothing?
But some thing one can always nihilate.
Despite no ill intention, wrongly stinging,
for else’s darkness always simple state.
A splendid age of liberty is given:
work in the sweat or stay in sweat to be;
pay for your choice: the water or the power;
be tolerant, or tolerant to be.
I find this subject painfully amusing
(I have had worn you how much sick am I)
Same way, as wise men try disputing nature
while drinking ancient tea and aging wine.
“We live to think, we ought to think for living,
aspire to power or submit to will;
endure the pain, neglect its happy limit;
confide in truth, but keep the scrupled thrill.”
“I think, therefore indeed I am -
I do cognize, am I befooled?
What do I choose: a shot or slam?
Here only tea in the kitchen cools.”
You can’t unravel? Never mind
I fancy I know even lesser
Khayyam requested taboo-wine
He even seemed to have a pleasure
In the beginning, everything is blank.
Empty.
Frighteningly so.
There’s nothing, nothing at all and it’s everywhere.
What is this not-place? Where did it come from? And what are these things that keep spilling out into it? There it is again! These open, formless…questions? They just won’t stop rolling out. But out of where?
This isn’t right. There must be some sort of something. Clearly something’s alive, living, but in what, from where? Or perhaps, who?
This ‘who’ should be stored inside of something. Something soft, something safe: a brain. Yes! That makes sense. What a good job I’m doing. Oh. OH! I like that- ‘I’! How beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.
It should have a shell to protect it. Save it from wiggling off and getting damaged in this ever-stretching lack. A head and a body to keep it upright. Not as remarkable as the brain, but it is my first try, and it does the job. Now I need a heart to pump this perplexing life throughout it all. Lips and a voice-box and some ears to hear the curious racket I can make.
But what’s the point in these sounds? What can they do? Maybe, if I string them together, I can give them significance. Let them reverberate from my brain to my mouth into…words. Perfect words like ‘eloquently’ and ‘serendipity’ and ‘cellar door’; tilt the sound and I can sing, ‘doe re me far so la tee doeeeeeeeeeee’, till they catch in my…
I need lungs. Lungs to fill up with powerful, passionate, perspicacious words, till I’m spitting out shrillness: ‘putrid fetid diarrhoea shit spatter SLIT CUBICLE QUARKING FETID FLUSH CURDLING CUNT CROTCH’. How easily these things fall from my lips.
And I laugh and laugh- let this brand-new feeling quiver all about me: happiness. I’ll make hands and arms, feet and legs; now I can let the pleasure carry me. It spins me about in circles till I’m dizzy and I fall to the…
I sit awhile and wait for my heart to run back to me. This must be what it is to be fragile, to be finite. To run out of breath.
Looking about, there’s nothing much to do with this new existence of mine. If only I could put these eyes to practice. Try to distinguish outlines of other ‘I’s that might exist too.
No luck. This silly darkness must be in the way. Maybe if I prick holes in it; reveal what it’s covering? ‘LET THERE BE LIGHT’, and it starts to seep in. The glow pools around me, leaving shoals of dust in its wake. I flick my fingers through it- try to hold it- but it’s like it’s not there at all. It settles on the tip of my nose, on the hairs on my arms. Till I’m covered in it. In this light and this dust. Yet, I don’t seem any different: I’m still smooth, still squidgy, still just me. It’s not enough. I want to learn what it is to be touched.
A surface starts to stretch out before me, underneath me, on and on and on. I reach down to brush my fingers across its roughness. Stop! Where are you going? All at once, I spring up and try to chase it, desperate to know where it will end. Where it might take me. If I jump from it, where will I fall? I pump my legs as hard as I can, but it’s far too clever, curves in on itself, too quick too fast till it’s right behind me again and to the left and the right. I’m surrounded.
‘You can’t scare me. I made you! And I’ll call you earth, because you’re just an oversized ball of dirt. You can’t do anything to me.’ So, I pounce.
I crash down with a shriek. What is that? An unpleasant smear of red has appeared on my now prickly knee and when I prod it, it stings and leaves a nasty-smelling wetness on my finger. Blood. More of this blood trickles down to my toes and I huddle my legs to my chest. This is not what I had in mind. Is everything else so… painful? Maybe if I try again? I’ll do a better job this time. Damn it, I can’t get the hang of this. Nothing is forming quite like I imagine it will. It’s not fair. ‘Go on, admit what you’ve done, you useless mistake. Why did you have to spoil my fun?’
But the earth doesn’t talk back. It’s not like me.
I resign myself to stretching out upon it; try to will my bleeding knee to be soft again, but it goes on stinging, regardless. More wet stuff has begun to fall out of my eyes. Ridiculous tears. Not even my body will do as it’s told.
As these tears trickle from my face to the ground, soft green stuff sprigs out from it. Grass. ‘An apology? Well, it’s too late now, the damage is done.’
Cautiously, I ruffle my fingers into it; rip at it recklessly when I’m satisfied that it won’t hurt me; let it cradle my shivering body when I’m bored of fighting. The tears have left my eyelids heavy, used up, tired, so I let them rest over my sodden eyes.
Things are easier in the dark.
When I wake, I don’t recognise anything. In my mind, I can view it all at once. Did I cry all this out? Rivers. Lakes. Seas. And more things like the grass have grown. Brilliant flecks of colour with tilting faces: flowers. Fiercer things reach their twisting limbs towards the sky: saplings. I can feel their life spread out all around me; hear their whisperings as they sway about in the breeze, yet I can’t understand what they’re saying.
‘Hello? Are you ‘I’s too?’
They carry on as if I didn’t say anything. Can they even hear me? ‘Please, I don’t know what I’m doing! There’s only one of me and so many of you. This isn’t fun anymore.’
Maybe if I will there to be more ‘I’s- like I willed myself- they’ll pop up somewhere. I get up. Clench my eyes tightly shut. Give it a go with all my might and think about another brain and shell and voice, like my own.
Hold on. What if- like the earth- the other ‘I’ tries to hurt me? Or what if they think I’m stupid, or don’t like their body and think I’m rubbish at this creating thing? At least I won’t be by myself. Will they be able to create with their thoughts, like I can? Will they even have thoughts? At least I won’t be by myself.
I scrunch up my nose and- one eye at a time- peak to see if the willing has worked.
Nothing.
Maybe they’re somewhere else? I listen out for any sign of life, but I’m alone.
‘HELLO?’
What if they’re smaller than me? I turn over every rock I can find, till my palms are tender and rough. Always holding the idea of this other ‘I’ in the front of my thoughts. What kind of body will they have? I picture them. Will them into being. Nothing.
I close my eyes: I’ll try again tomorrow.
‘IS ANYONE THERE?’ I hunt through every woodland, plain, jungle, tundra. Willing always as I go. Till my legs are scratched and aching, and I can comb every trail in my sleep. Still alone. I’ll try again tomorrow.
‘CAN YOU HEAR ME?’ I hold my breath and dive under still waters. Crashing waves. Till my lungs are filled with salt and brine. Willing, willing, willing. Nothing. I’ll try again tomorrow.
‘WHY WON’T ANYTHING ANSWER ME? IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE?’
I will as I run and as I search and as I sleep, and I try again tomorrow. I will as I search and I run and search and tomorrow. And I’m alone and tomorrow. And I will and search run alone run run search alone run WILL run alone search run alone alone tomorrow.
‘HELLOOOOOOO?’ I use up the last rip of my breath.
Time has formed a mountain beneath me. A look-out point to an empty world. As if my mind, my existence isn’t enough of a reminder.
I almost didn’t notice it.
Are you real? Am I dreaming?
It’s perched on a rock nearby and watching.
Cautious.
It’s silent but it’s certainly m o v i n g!
Tilting its head from
side to side
and fluffing the strange flaps
where its arms should be.
Is it imitating me? Is it as fascinated as I am?
THIS IS IT
IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING
It hops on its little, pink claws, edging closer to me. Not like me, but potentially friendly. Definitely alive! Dove.
‘Hello.’ Only manage a whisper.
How long have you been searching, little one? Were you looking for me? And for a second, it opens its beak and I think it might speak back to me, but instead it whistles a funny tune and takes off into the sky.
I’m not disappointed.
This is proof.
Proof that I am not the only ‘I’.
Proof that there is the potential for more.
That this is only the beginning.
