HORKHEIMER, MINDY

(Jan. 10. 05)
A rodent-gray post autumnal morning. Cloud curs, too may to count, lowing like cattle, grazing a lice-scaled sky. I have much to do today, this rodent-gray day, cloud heavy day, as it is. First I must learn how to register on-line, a most inhospitable task, so I have learned through persistent error; then there is the filling in of several forms, none which seem facile; then a number of unsolicited phone calls regarding employment (deployment would be a more precipitous word); then a visit to the psyche-vivisectionist; then, with no shortness of luck, home for the evening. All this, these, are to be achieved while strung-out on the vicissitudes of OCD, as would be the case, or as would have it. Max Brod, to the best of my knowledge, is dead, poor bastard. That, I conjecture, is what being friends with Kafka ends with; deadness. I took a seminar in Kafka while an undergraduate student, with some Nietzsche sprinkled in for good measure, back when I was less crawly with OCD lice. The professor, a stout, bearded, braided, Hasidic, fellow, suggested that it would be quite the miracle if we all, we students, didn’t throw ourselves screaming from the top of the Chancellor’s office sometime during or after the completion of the seminar. He was, of course, mistaken, as here I sit waiting for my coffee to steep smoking incessantly, so there you have it, Kafka is not a murderer, as some would suggest. I am drinking, mouthing, lips crackling, coffee from a mug I purchased at an emporium here in the city. It can be best described as an aesthetic corpse; a floral atrocity of poorly executed flowers, patterned after who knows what, in shades broaching on the ridiculously inartistic. I have, sadly enough, several such mugs, none of which I find satisfactory for the Eucharist of coffee, my gore-hole of a mouth being indifferent to such repentant offerings. Or is it the confection of coffee, more so, that I am after here perhaps? While laving my hands with soapy tap water I had the chance, chin-up, to look at myself in the bathroom mirror. What a horror: my hair, if that is what it is, was whored, smeared upside against the fracture of my skull, brittle follicle remnants, arching, crestfallen, trying to form a hirsute whole. This, I can assure, was not a pretty sight, sadly enough for me, I suppose. Perhaps a Kafkaesque hair cut is in order, stiffened and terrorized by a monstrous paternal abusiveness. Poor black-lunged bastard. In one story a character, who we are led to believe is Kafka himself, throws himself from the parapet of a bridge into the black-roil of channel-water after his cuntish father admonishes him for wanting to marry. Such savage infanticide is criminal. Perhaps it is time to assuage my hair-mess; as it I well past ten o’clock, pre meridian, and time for such lavations. Or is it ablutions, I so often get the two confused so it seems.
All things being considered, I consider nothing. How can a cleric, having scribed on bone-white papyrus, enclosed, as it was, in a glass mausoleum, 'finding God is part of becoming human', take his theologizing with any seriousness? Now God, as I understand Him, which is limited at best, is transcendent, meaning otherworldly, and we corpse bags, being mortal, and as such, incapable of transcendence, are just that, fucking corpse-bags, nothing more. Things, too many so it seems, confuse the fuck out of me; which wouldn’t be so bad if fucking I were and needed a respite from it all. This paragraph took far too much time and editing to write, this must not go on if I am to go on, as I must, go on, so it seems.
A pitted moon wrenching the life right out of me, me who is so lifeless to begin with. A threadbare sky, creased like a drunkard’s gore-hole, tensing with the poison that puts an end to the jimmy legging. Dead you will be, dead as a doornail, as it is. Thorn scratches, like nettle-razors, cutting deep the impression of this, this no-nothing that is something, into the sculls of my face. What something, I haven’t the foggiest notion, notions being highly overrated, as it is. I have, so this is the truth, many too many copies of Ulysses, more than one man reading with blinding impunity could possibly ever hope to plow through. Furrows, so that’s it, deep-rutted and cleverly obstructing any forward, or could it be backward, locomotion. None whatsoever. No movement fore or to. It’s the fucking Impetigo again, cursing me, beating, harsh, the soles of my feet. One, I suppose, can get use to this thrashing and abrading. If one doesn’t, if one is incapable of change, the whole fucking shooting matching, so I’ve heard, is done with; capotes, that’s how they put it, dead fucking capotes. What the fuck a hooded cloak has to do with any of this is pure nonsense, plain and simple, just intolerable nonsense, I’m afraid.
In order to put an end to this battering gore-hole of mine, stammering, as it is, teeth charring, biting hard into chalky bone that I mistake for words, I will need to sleep, fall jimmy legged, as always, into la petite mort, so Sartre would have put it. This sleeping Buenos, so I’ve been told, assails, or assuages, the consciousness once and for all, or for several unbraided hours, so I’ve come to learn, slowly, and with much indifference to being told anything at all since that first shearing.
(Jan. 11. 05)
A murderous Camus (ean) sky; bluer still; cerulean, yet bluer. An Egyptian azure, Nile blue, which it isn’t, as the Nile, so it is, is brown and turbid with death. Today I am to have the barnacle removed form the lid of my eye; that thing, a wen, so it is, oily with suppurates, as it is. I can hear, with faint acuity, the trashbin truck removing the dirt and garbage from the foot of my lane way; which isn’t mine, but belongs to the proprietor and owner of my home whom I am not. The harsh, barking joy of that first or second Gauloises of the day, rancorous and indelicate. Perhaps I too will be cast jimmy legged into the trashbin of narcoleptic evasion. Why narcoleptic, you may ask. Because to me, perhaps that is what death will be when it bitters and damns me unworthy of conscious thought. Now, so I’ve heard, that Scaramouche was a fine and delicate fellow, as told to us by the inimitable Rafael Sabatini in the novel of the selfsame name. I must tell you, I again, just this moment, had the misfortune of seeing my visage in the bathroom mirror and am anxious with it all, it all, as it is, being me. The evil declension of age, the roughing towards death, is most unpleasant, this I can assure you. My copy of Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche is threaded and thumb-smudged, from generous rereading, I would gather. It was, or is, published by McClelland & Stewart, Limited, Toronto, copyrighted 1932, so it reads on the fourth page inward. This book, I gather, I will never read, not out of malice or elitism, but from simple indifference and nothing more.
I suppose I should tell you a story, but I won’t, as all stories, no matter what they’re about, are not worth the bother of telling. Stories are for those undisciplined in the alchemy of the imagination. Perhaps as a result of dim-wittedness, or a certain destitution of spirit, one, a spirit, or soul, have you, that I have not, as it is, ensnared in this corpse bag that claims to be me. Doctor Macdonald, a most generously spirited and kind man, rid my eyelid of that most ghastly corpse, so it was. A kartoid, or some such cirrhotic drone, was removed with razor-sharp precision by Doctor Macdonald, who had to stick me in the eye with a precision-built needle for the purpose of freezing the labium, as is the case in such non-evasive surgeries. The needle pricking, as it was, so fucking prickling, was most inhospitable, to put it unimaginatively. This procedure I wish not to have proceeded upon myself again, I’d rather loose the eye, or the labium, than put up with that painful bothering for a second time again.

I now address an appeal to the healthy: don’t persist in reading nothing but healthy books, acquaint yourselves also with so-called pathological literature, from which you may derive considerable edification. Healthy people should always, so to speak, take certain risks. For what other reason, blast and confound it, is a person healthy? Simply in order to stop living one day at the height of one’s health? Damned bleak fate…I know now more than ever that intellectual circles are filled with philistinism, I mean, moral and aesthetic chickenheartedness, Timidity, though, is unhealthy.
Robert Walser (from The Robber)

It takes too life fucking long to arrange, safely, my environment in order, now this is the kicker, to feel anything remotely assuaging anxiety, that is, the assuaging of that. Beckett, I fucking swear, had fucking OCD. I just fucking know it. Those fucking stones, pebbles, who knows what the fuck they were suppose to be, to signify, metaphors being so fucking inanely stupid, dulling, that he, or his characters, schuss’s, all of them, sadly, interchange, incessantly, from one pouch pocket to the other with an anxiousness fucking impossible to assuage, ever. Beckett, iron-gray haired, filings, they were, Joycean sycophant that he was, was an anaylsand of Wilfred Bion’s way back when couches were stuffed prickly with horse’s hair. These words, have you, coming from the mouth, or the thoughts, more like it, of a great Beckett admirer, the admirer that I am, and always have been, will be, intently till death do us parting. I put the stupid fucking eye ointment on my labium, perineum between forehead and dull sculpted cheekbones, and it stung, fucking stung like all shit, it stung, stinging. That’s certainly enough, more than enough, of that shit, I tell you. No more will I assuage my eye with ointments and medicate balms, ever again, no matter fucking what, no way. I feel an arousal in the frontal lobe, fucking nonsense maker that it is, always has been, fuck that it is, craving me into a pugilist’s dime fight, paid for, pursed, by some simple fuck with a tight-string hold on the purse, so it is. Not knowing, nor caring to, how to throw a punch, I would no doubt be at an indistinct disadvantage, so I would, most certainly. One too may blows, haymakers, that’s it, to the face and I’ll be ducking my own reflection in the shaving mirror, poor unsightly bastard that I’d have become, sadly: stately plumb Mulligan bastard that I would be, doubtlessly. I tried Lithium, but it didn’t fucking work at all in the fucking least. Poetic prevaricator that I am, oedipal I that I am. A fucking stick in the eye socket would have hurried on, coaxing, the wen to find refuge in someone else’s sorry eye, not mine. As it was, having now been chipped off with a precision-built surgical instrument, a fucking needle, no less, that stung, stinging, my labium, as it did, mercilessly.

If I were Kafka’s ghost
I’d blind my eyes of sight

And eat the storm and carrion
That forever scolds the night

No Freudian recanting,
Nor blissful oedipal fright

Just simple cunnilingus
Tongue rasping in delight

Kafka’s ghost, I’m afraid (never, so) can go fuck itself too. Now Irving, poor fellow, is either dead or well on his way to the charnel house, so I have heard, repeatedly. It would seem, as it does, so, that I am getting conflicting reports on his liveliness; some make claim to his death, others to his tenure in an old folks home somewhere in the city of Montreal. This place, as it was, and so remains, of my entrance into this word, the best of all possible so I was told before the shearing began, ruthlessly. My head, if I recall, was mucked with blood, trails, scallops, so had it, that lingered on the instep of my dear mother’s thighs-Molly’s thighs. Bullied out, I was, expectorated into the searing, bitter lights of the operating theatre, no theatre that I can recall ever being so sterile and uninviting. I, the expectorant, having no choice in the matter; born I was, given birth, without my consent, so it was. Pre-infanticide, I would call it, pure and simple. No bones, chalky and gray-marrow, about it, none whatsoever. Either you give in, kow tow, as it is, or get torn out through the belly, fists like gallows flattening the sculls of your head; which, as would have it, is already flattened and stupored with blood lice. Trails of it, blood-muddied, as I have made reference to in passing. Were they scabbard thighs, trembling with disgust, or some other such selfsameness, I have no notion, nor can recall, remembering, time being what it is; a fucking savage cunt. Simple as it may seem, or be to some, this recalling is a nuisance unworthy of my patience, limited, as it is, so. Beckett, he, now he probably came out without a hitch, head scrumming the table with delicate aplomb, silly fellow, soon to be stricken, stolid, with OCD as I have conjectured in mentioning. Irving, well I suppose he was a far different story, one with neither a beginning nor an end, as it was, or is, if he is still taking in breath as I write.
If I had been fortunate enough to have had a Midwife at my dissension into life, I would have much preferred one who smoked, madly, with middling wifely competence. As one so inclined to baby or cowl me in starched linen would not have been to my liking, in the least. Having had, as it was, no choice in the matter, this seems to be a moot point, incautiously mooting, as it is. Time, as it is, or as I understand it, is never of the essence, in fact, it is soulless, and as such, incapable of transcending into the ether-most brine of this, the best of all possible worlds. Now dogsbodies, they have this capacity, as it is, to transcend every and all things, regardless of the Millicent (ness) of it all, the effort, rather unpleasing, though rewarding just the same. I would, as it is, or would have, allowed Joyce to sodomize me had he so desired. Perhaps this ass-fuck might have made a better writer of me, if not that, perhaps a much less impatient man.
It is insufferably obvious that I have used the term, or rejoinder, as it is, with far too much regularity in passing. Perhaps, another oft and overused word, one that signifies or enhances little of substance, I should master the incontinent use of words and their phrasings and be done with it, as it is. First, however, I should evoke an unconscious hibition and put an end to all this tomfoolery, at most until morning.
(Jan. 12. 05)
A sullen sky, whored, like marzipan. Shell-gray, perhaps, yet grayer still. The smokestack, bilious, is dormant; no issuing of corpsegases or skin lice. I have thought, too often, of the skillful illusions that rake time across the coals of this bitter declension. Aging, so I am learning, is a most inhospitable guest, crammed, as it is, in the postbox, this gallows where letters and misgivings are received then snuffed out, like a candle, burnt-wicked and smoldering. Stephen’s poor, dead mother laid out, as she was, in graveclothes, the stench of earthworms, licebodies, a mortuary-sky, never two the same, death putting an end to all that, I suppose. Either the taste buds in my gorehole are mordant, stilled, or the coffee this morning is less bitter and lying. The Gauloises, thankfully, have remained selfsame, indelicately pleasing as always. I can see, from the height of my windows, the lettercarrier approaching, my postbox waiting, tremulous, for a bill or a prohibition to be boxed. I am, as it is, none too pleased with the prospect of a scolding, as the mornings, generally, are too ungrateful for such indelicacies.

I am not a minstrel
Nor a caster of doubt
Just a simple philistine

God willing

I once wrote a paragraph of no more than four or five lines, as I recall, making reference to a Fillini film I saw late one horrid night. The camera obscura, as it is called in philosophical circles, pans down a row of train seats taking in the obscenities and deformations of those thus seated on their way to who knows, or perhaps knew, where. These tortuous images, as they were to me, have become what Jean Baudrillard refers to as simulacra, or non-images; ones so mistaken and confuted with all imagery that they have lost there original meaning all together, as it is.

Very Zarathustrian, this silent laughter. Flowers laugh silently. Grass and plants and the whole forest laugh silently. The sky and the stars laugh silently. If there is a background noise to the universe, it is this silent laughter, this inaudible sound like a distant echo of man’s emergence and the catastrophe of the real world.
Jean Baudrillard

I aspire to simulacra, to the compete de-animation of myself, all of me, thought, emotion, refutations, conjectures, alibis, truths (so few) lies, indiscretions, botulisms, tom foolery, as past mentioned, evil-doing, good-doing, solicitousness, helpfulness, inhospitableness, injuriousness, scrofulousness (more) petulance, argumentativeness, rare and bitter intelligence, balefullness (no such word, I gather) et cetera. If this I can accomplish, I will die a most happy man. If not, I can simple go fuck myself and be done with it, all of it, as it is. Aspirations, as such, are tricky things, nothing less, but so much more I suppose.

1* The world is all that is the case.
The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

If this is so, so the case may be, this affair, this affair of things, as would have it, then I, so it is, am fucked, terribly, fucked, as would be the case. The somnambulist’s enuresis awaits my retiring, sleep being the only thing I have any skill at at all, so it seems, sadly enough.