Invited to the latest fiasco, I hummed and hawed, delayed the RSVP, and before my friends affected a certain indifference — but still turned up early.
It was said to be the most magnificent fiasco yet. Everyone wanted to be part of it.
No expense was spared. There were wonderful arrangements of flowers. The speakers were very convincing, both in argument and manner: expert coaching was evident. No one doubted that highly skilled speech-writers had crafted each detail of every sentence.
I was lonely, and wandered out onto the terrace.
Bougainvillea.
I attended the assassination. It was a crude, bloody affair: as so often, the first to die was the chauffeur. There was a low turn-out. Everyone was getting restless, and no wonder. It was a poor show.
The summer passed so slowly. Most of my small circle had fled the heat, and escaped abroad or to the mountains or coast. Lack of funds meant I had to remain in the city.
The summer was humid, heavy, and seemed to sit around in stacks of golden, sweating ingots.
I fell in love, but not really. My loneliness has a voracious appetite: I felt guilty, making small-talk with her — it was as if I had thrown this young woman to the mercies of a dangerous animal.
Why do I defer almost my entire existence to some impotent proxy? One should commit oneself, Ferdinand insisted, as one would commit a murder.
Despite our indigence, we managed to get tickets to the debacle. I admit to being quite impressed. There were beheadings, riots, insurgency. It was a classic debacle: starting slowly, the outcome at once blindingly obvious but progressing with a quicksand inevitability. Incompetent and corrupt regimes, bigotry, hypocrisy, injustice of the highest order. The inadequate lines of communication, which served so signally to deepen the confusion, were particularly well done.
Summer turned to autumn. We were obliged to attend the austerity. I hated it. The leads went through the motions, complacency incarnate. There were some dramatic crowd scenes, which unsettled me, the atmosphere was callous, hopeless. Occasionally, a loud-mouthed orator would perform a selection of famous lies, but the slickness lacked conviction, the style was insufficiently oily, and even the audience, chilled and supine, was bored with the repertoire. How do they get away with such stuff, year after year?
By winter, my lover had left. She sensed the emptiness inside me, the lack of a person. I sympathised. When she had moved out of our cramped, dingy lodgings, things hardly changed. As before, I lived with myself: it was a melancholy business, like hauling a hefty, awkward mannequin around with me all the time.
Very occasionally, late at night, when I lay half asleep, I sensed the mannequin shift, and grin.
I went to view the latest buffoon. To tell the truth, it was a superb buffoon. It had caused a sensation, and would certainly attract many followers. Even I was tempted to get an autograph.
A brutal winter arrived. I spent my evenings poring over albums, going through a selection of clichés: “The magic is over”, “The party’s over”, “The best is over”…
A political person can only define themselves by failure, Ferdinand declared. The question that must haunt them is: “Have I done enough”? An individualist, on the other hand, has no such worries. They may ask themselves the question: “Have I been enough”?
Going to the botanical gardens to keep warm, spending hours in the Tropical House.
Images of the buffoon were everywhere.
With friends, reluctantly, I went to see the new disaster. More beheadings, more slogans hoarsely chanted, more “unfortunate accidents”, “heavy-handed treatment”, “reluctantly drawn in”, “reluctantly left with no choice but to take the route of necessary force”… Early in the proceedings, we began to lose interest, but of course the disaster just went on and on, as is the way with disasters.
Later, we quarrelled. I’m not stupid, I said.
Later still, alone in my room: Perhaps I am stupid? I thought. How can you be sure?
The winter dragged on. For weeks, I was troubled by the notion that I was stupid. I had considered myself clever, or at least clever enough to know that kindness and tenderness were good, even if I myself could only rarely embody those qualities. But now?
Of course, I had my room, the desert of my solitude into which I might retreat, like a speechless prophet. Dying alone is easy: everyone must do it. But living alone is not so easy. If people could bear to live alone, there would be less trouble in the world, but people prefer to fight, and even to kill, rather than to be alone.
I’m not stupid, I decided.
Still, no spring. The nights felt ancient, each one a geological period, a creak of glaciers, mammoths in snow. I shivered under the covers. Outside, in the streets, children were playing saviours and charlatans.
I was invited to preview the genocide. My heart wasn’t in it, and I declined. I wondered, if things went badly, whether I would be asked to take part? Doubtless, we would all be involved at some point, one way or another.
The blind are taken to the spectacle. We make the spectacle, and are made blind. There are rumours of the greatest spectacle yet beginning to rise. I do not see it, I do not see it.
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from the series superstyler | series of poems, commenced 2012, ongoing
This poem: June 2014
hypergram 