idiotic investigation the 6th

“The bridge often leads nowhere.”
­––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

0

The bridge stretched long.
And our man – standing at one end of a valley –,
prepared to cross it to the other end.

1

Of the bridge our man could not help feeling that it was fearfully unsteady.
Its wooden frame – carved out of trees from the valley beneath it – groaned.
It twisted under the strain of its threading ropes.

“What is a dangerous bridge?” he thought, “and can it really be a bridge?”

To strengthen himself, our man thought about other bridges he had crossed in the past––but, sadly, he could not think of any just then.
No doubt he had crossed bridges before, but none were so remarkably dangerous.

Though he persisted in trying to recall, his attempt, like the bridge, led only to an uncertain place in his mind.

He thought about the bridges crossed by others; but here too he found little comfort: in all those stories he could not recall whether these bridges were dangerous or not. Our man pondered the implications strewn out in the yawning valley below.

But the wind then added to the calamity.
Our man quietly observed the bridge swing:

Right … Left … Right … Left … Right … Left …

Yet somehow it was equally unsettling to see it swinging in the other direction:

Left … Right … Left … Right … Left … Right …­­

This hypnotism persisted until a conclusion came bursting through:
The bridge was being toyed with by some god absurdly concerned with unsettling this out of the way bridge in the middle of an out of the way land.
“Of course!”

This thought strengthened our man, not slightly, since he was now, as it were, in this out of the way place, held in the view of some far-removed and insane god.

What a mysterious bridge this bridge was.

2

Of course, it was also dark.

And although the street lamps on the other side of the valley were lit, their illumination was blotted out by the darkness above, beneath, around and even on the bridge.

The street lamps were mere isolated beacons.
Our man would need to get to them.

Looking up, our man closed his eyes before opening them again
––but not in the manner of a blink. Our man did not blink.

The unplucked stars glittered.

Our man’s gaze fell onto the surrounding mountains; he saw them dimly curl their sable shoulders as though against the  wind––or even as though the mass of their blackness  indicated that the navy star-flecked sky was yet to be filled-in completely:
as though the universe were just endless sky––yet to be painted.

The bridge heaved over the open mouth of a blank canvas.

3 

The first step stepped.

Hands on the wooden banister, our man could not even see his feet.
He touched his toes down gently with each step, afraid that nothing solid would be there to hold him––even the banister was invisible.

Our man breathed in the sable wind.

4

In time, he began making his way more confidently; the street lamps were still terribly far away from our man––and the unplucked stars fell from his worry.

Toward the middle of the bridge our man had to stop.

Not only had his left toe discovered a gap in the bridge floor the size of which he had no way of estimating; but a terrible wind slammed into him from the right side and sent the bridge churning askance.

The stars were underneath him and the street lamps ahead streaked in semi-circles.

He felt that his grip would pass through the ropes; that his feet would break through the floor. Then the emergency  dwindled as the bridge settled once more.

Having weighed the gravity of his circumstance, our man decided to turn back …

5

But the floor leading back had disappeared.

Our man tried to recall a similar situation, but all he could see, even in his mind, was black. He stayed still, half expecting the floor beneath him to evaporate; expecting – thankfully – to be swallowed at any moment. But neither of these occurred.

It was just the case that our man could not move in either direction.
He spun toward the street lamps, then toward the place that he came from, then again to the street lamps.

The bridge settled over the mouth a blank canvas

6

The wind returned, gradually at first––then more intensely.
Building up in notches, the gusts came from all directions: what might have made him fall forward was countered by what made him fall back.

There was nothing left to do: it was a leap in either direction, wasn’t it?
He was already fallen, lost, gone, ended, wasn’t he?

To leap forward, toward the street lamps, the lamps that somehow became his goal; that was surely preferable than to leap back––to where he came from!

There was no guarantee in either direction.

He braced himself against the wind.
Holding the wooden banisters.
The homogeneous black of the valley began to glow in its own way.

The unplucked stars glittered.
He breathed in the sable air.

7

He leaped.

The stars were above him and the street lamps ahead fell low
before rising dramatically.

7

He leaped.

The stars were above him and the street lamps ahead fell low
before stabilizing again.

7

He leaped.

The stars were above him and the street lamps ahead fell low
before veering right.

8

He leaped.

The stars were above him and the street lamps ahead fell low before
––evaporating.

9

Our man slammed into a standing position once again, seeing nothing.
Turning, he again saw nothing.

Where were the street lamps?

9

Our man slammed into a standing position once again, seeing nothing.
Turning, he saw the street lamps.

9

Our man slammed into a standing position once again, seeing nothing.

10

Our man slammed into a standing position once again.

11

Holding the banisters, he cautiously stepped forward and realized that the floor extended ahead of him; he stepped back and found that it also went in the other direction.

The bridge had returned to its original state.

But everything was irreparably dark; our man could see nothing and had lost track of which direction he was in. The lamps, the stars; everything was extinguished.

Desperate, he leaped once more.

11

Our man fell into the mouth of a blank canvas.

Our eyes cannot tell us where our man has gone,
nor if he has even fallen.
Blindly, we feel the sable mountains hunching.

––But the street lamps, the streets lamps!
They are being lit one by one.

–––––––––––––––––––––– THE END

[For a brief essay revolving around the themes presented in this investigation, refer to the “Old Thought” On Returning.]

idiotic investigation the 5th

[The following words were penned at the culmination of a long life; shortly after the diary entry was completed, the writer’s life-long labor was as well.]

March 2^nd, 2080.

When I was 25 years old (I am now 92), I made a decision to die in a particular way; but it was not to be just another suicide: it had to be more than just mere suicide.

In those days I read a lot about animals that instinctually kill themselves, and I saw that the odd actions of these creatures were not very different from those of humans on the verge of suicide.
In my mind, the irreversible moment of suicide, that cusp of the act, its totalizing finale, was just a reaction to some intolerable circumstance.
In the case of the animals, it was always a way to make way for the coming generation, which was presumably better able to cope with the new strains of living; suicide in humans is quite similar: it is just a particularly miserable type of murder by the species.
This is why my death could not be a mere suicide.

During my late twenties, my whole life began to revolve around this problem: How am I going to choose to die without committing suicide?
That was my first real problem, and it was also my last; at the time that I first thought about it, I felt that it as a very philosophical problem.

Now I realize that that was foolish; in my life I have been anything but a philosopher.
––But in my death?

Anyway, during that early period my friends started to get tired of my obsession; after every dinner I repeated the same words, whether drunkenly, sadly, exuberantly or whatever else I was capable of at that time:
“There has to be another way to go. 2500 years of civilized human existence and we still die like common animals? What a farce!”
I would go on to catalogue all the ways of committing suicide that I could imagine, pouring wine and misery all over the table. I would also claim that every suicide could be explained away either by grief, sadness, abjectness, or desperation.
“There has to be another way to go!”

There was no way of glorifying suicide:
In my eyes, even through suicide, mankind’s attempt to grab hold of what was really its own – death – just seemed like the pitiful bumbling of a creature meeting its demise earlier than scientifically anticipated through a series of often ridiculous and unrepeatable circumstances. Hilarious self-destructive machines.
Like the organs of an autothytic insect: rupturing mundanely beneath its dumb eyes.
Fumbling with their toes to knock over a stool.
Waiting for the bath to fill.
Perhaps polishing the knife.
Loading the bullets.
All, so pitifully mundane.

Though my friends sympathized with me or at times even found my musings marginally interesting, I began to notice that they ceased to enjoy my company. I was becoming a bit of a bore––or worse, depressing. But if the truth be told, what I noticed sooner, was that I was already bored with them. I needed to find a solution to my problem.
So I resorted to what anyone else would have resorted to in my place: isolation.

Having secured a place to stay undisturbed and disconnected (both socially and professionally––I was a teacher in those days), and also having secured a means for keeping myself fed, watered and suitably entertained throughout my isolation, I holed up in a house by the sea; a house that had its front door right on the coast.
I was 30 years old at that time.

This process brought instant revelation. Even while I was still making the necessary arrangements, the pieces finally fell together.

Like a bag of sand our emotional composition is constantly shaped by the hands that touch us; and like sand, emotions do not shape themselves so much as they take on the shape of their container.
It was obvious that any suicide I could dream up was just an emotional outburst or implosion; in fact, when I realized this it was hard for me to imagine a suicide devoid of this type of emotion. In this insight I found the key to my inventive death:
It had to be a triumph over reflex.
It would take time, but the grains of sand had to be lost, one by one.

To manage a reflex: that was my life-long commitment.

I began to read about reflexes. Sadly, I learned little more than I already knew, little more than anyone with a body already knows. But one thing struck me: it was said that man could under no circumstances repress the reflex to breathe; whether under water, or simply with their mouths shut, a human being will – on the point of suffocation – breathe.
This is why the drowned are filled with water.
Their bodies, suspended, wrapped in sunlight’s web, are filled with water, water that needed to be air.

The house is so near to the water that to reach it all I have to do is step out of the house and walk 20 strides forward. I cannot tell you how many times I have done this exact thing over the past decades; at all hours, in all states of mind, I walked this short path, always with my eyes on the point where the sky meets the water.

The process began miserably enough; I administered the usual techniques: fasting, abstinence, sleep deprivation, remaining still in intolerable positions. I withstood harsh weather for days, I burned my skin, I tortured my body and soul in a thousand ways. Most of all, I refused every urge to leave the house and the horrible stretch of shore that came to be the entire world for me over the last six decades.

Looking back from here, my thirties and forties were essentially spent trying to pass as much time as possible on the verge of death, without actually dying.
That is what all of this self-imposed torture amounted to in the first two decades of my strange experiment: a long hard look at death.

But one thing was an eternal frustration during this time: all of my techniques had to come to an end: every attempt was eventually thwarted by a flaming reflex burned deeply into my brain, coded along my spine, diffused through my nervous system, igniting every cell of my body, animating their mitochondria and finally cooling in the swirling vortex of nuclei meditating quietly in each. I had to overcome all of that and I did.

Eventually I slept, eventually I ate, eventually I sheltered my body, and so on and …

To manage a reflex: that was my life-long dedication.
For 62 years I prepared to die in this new way.

But I ceased this physical training on my 50^th birthday; by that point I was as capable of self-denial as I would ever be. More training was likely only to tire me.

From that point on, for the next 40 years, I spent my life walking from the house to the shore, contemplating my annihilation, trying to face it with the most genuine indifference I could muster. The rule was that whenever I slipped from this ideal I would go back.

Only three times did I reach the water, did I dip my toes, did I send ripples into eternity.
Once in my late 70’s.
Again on my 86^th birthday.
Then finally, only just yesterday.
The third ripple was signal to whatever could have received it; I would arrive shortly.

To manage a reflex: that was my life-long dedication.
For 62 years I prepared to die in this new way.
I finally will today.

I write these words, the first I have written since I have been in this house. I am thinking about reading my words, speaking them, as the first words I have spoken since I have been in this house. But sadly, my life efforts have erased that kind of courage from my bones, my muscles no longer made for life.

In a moment, I will stand up, weak as I now am, and leave the house for a final time.
I will walk toward the sea. I will walk into it. I will submerge my body, my mouth, my nose, my eyes, my head.
On the sea floor, I will …

idiotic investigation the 4th

“Though we’re twins, he’s my double.”
________________________________________________

0

One twin told the other twin to close the window.
He was holding his hand out and counting raindrops.

The window slid down, reflecting the wet trees, the soggy clouds, the camera …

1

The one twin was holding a towel out for the other to dry his arm.
Dry once more, he folded the towel and dabbed the sill.

When the one twin exited the room, the other one set to deciding which was colder:
His blue-white fingers or the gray-blue air?

2

“When we were born, my twin came out first: his head, then his shoulders, and smoothly his torso, thighs and feet.
My turn came second, but my feet came first.
––Actually, they didn’t really come out at all since they were apart and so I was standing inside my mother. I imagine it like this:
They tugged and tugged and my feet danced and danced, but eventually they caught me, held my legs together like a mermaid, and wh-iiish. Out onto the cold Earth.”

The one twin slid out like a good fish, the other one like a stupid fish.

3

Ceaseless wind and rain, but the house was warm.

The one twin brought in a tray with coffee on it.
The other twin was making noise on a leather chair.

The one twin poured the coffee, steam rising.
The other twin, with eyes on the rising steam, settled down in his place.

“Can I add the sugar?”
“Yes, but don’t make a mess.”
“I won’t. I had to dab the table last time, remember?”

The one twin opened the sugar jar and said:

“Come on then, before it gets cold.” 

4

Ceaseless wind and rain, but the house was warm.

The twins sat facing each other, quietly drinking their coffee.
When they were done, the one twin told the other that he had to go get something from the car, that he would be right back.
The other twin asked what it was. ––It was his bag.

The one twin got up and approached the door. He opened it.
Then the other twin stood up and offered to get the bag from the car.

“No, that’s fine. Just stay here. I’ll only be a minute.”

But the other twin stood between his twin and the open door. He slowly closed the door, and its rusty hinges made a long whiny sound:

p-l-l-e-e-e-z …

The one twin looked at the other twin for a few seconds and studied his face, which was identical to his own: it had a surprising expression.

“Fine, if you insist.”

The one twin handed the car key to the other one.

“But are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

“No, that’s fine. Just stay here. I’ll only be a minute.” 

5

Stepping out of the elevator the other twin walked across the cold and grey cement slabs of the parking lot ground; the lot was striped with fluorescent lines that all pointed toward the garage gate.

The gate was open.
Frigid air, and rain, streamed in. He considered the gate for a moment; he could feel the wind faintly at his cheeks. The imagined rain froze his cheeks.

The car was parked on the far side of the lot, far from the gate.
He walked toward it, the key squeezed between his fingers.

6

At the elevator door, waiting for it to return, he held the bag to his chest.
His eyes were set on the open gate.

The lift arrived, its doors opened: he stepped into it, went up to the flat.
The lift arrived, its doors opened: he dropped the bag, went to the gate.

The  doors of the elevator stayed open; its mirror reflected a car, a wall, the camera …

7

At the open gate, the wind was blasting in.
He finally felt raindrops on his bare arms.

He stepped through the gate, out under the rain; the wind quickened him and within minutes – with a soaked shirt – he was nearly around the corner.

He could only think of the sea. 

8

The one twin was pacing at the front door of the house.
Once or twice he opened the door when he thought he heard the elevator.
Minutes passed and the twin was annoyed.

He went to the window, opened it and leaned out.
Scanning the street below, down left, then far up to the right.

He spotted his twin turning the corner.

9

Dressed and in the elevator, the one twin stood close to the closed doors; the moment they parted he was out the building’s entrance.

The glass door swung shut behind him
––reflecting the elevator door, the doorman, the camera …

10

The one twin ran out under the rain, calling to the other.
The other twin, well down the other street by then, didn’t hear him.

The one twin ran faster, yelled more loudly.
The other twin finally noticed.
Turning, he saw that it was his twin coming after him.
He looked at his double as he approached, faster and faster.

He turned and ran as fast as he could. 

11

The one twin seemed to know his way around.
The other twin  seemed to be lost, confused.

The wind only picked up and the rain only belted harder.
The road that they were on was long and curved, lined with sopping wet buildings, the highest one no more than 6 or 7 stories.
The glistening asphalt slid cars up and down its face.
The streetlights flickered.
The traffic lights cast their cards.
The doubles chased along the curve, crossing intersections.
Cars stopped abruptly as the two hurdled past; the one twin yelling, the other one escaping in dumb silence.
Hail now pelted down like stray dice.
Gliding at the curve’s end, the road now steeper as they sprinted down the city’s hill.

Toward the sea.

12

On the main road: a lighthouse looming to the right, a ferris wheel spinning to the left.

The one twin began to lose his patience and called more threateningly to his twin.
The other one crossed the sprawling intersection, under the rain, dashing amidst the cars; he somehow made it to the other side and began running to the lighthouse.

The one twin, reluctant to cross the wet and busy intersection, ran along the other side of the road; he kept abreast of his twin, calling out to him loudly, angrily.

When he finally was able to, the one twin crossed both roads to get to his twin’s side.
By then he had stopped running. He was standing at the railing, the wind almost throwing him back, and the blue-white waves smashing up into the gray-blue sky, drenched him.
He stood there, hands clasped to the rail, facing the invisible horizon.

As the one twin approached he heard the other screaming along to the waves:

“wh-iiish … wh-iiishhhh … wh-iiisshhhhhhhhh …”

He was about to reach out and grab his shoulder, the lighthouse looming tall above them, not yet casting its light over the darkening sea; the white froth smashing upward, drenching the twins together; he almost held him, he almost caught him.

The other twin jumped over the rail, feet first, down into the frigid sea.

13

“Help! Help!”
The twin screamed and screamed. Hardly anyone around, only cars swooping by.
“Help! Help!”
The one twin was staring down at the other twin.
“I can’t swim! I can’t swim!” He screamed to the cars.
“We can’t swim!”

A car passed, reflecting the windblown trees, the soaked walls, the camera …

wh-iiish

–––––––––––––––––––––––– THE END

[For a brief essay revolving around the themes presented in this investigation refer to the “Old Thought” On Being a Twin.]

idiotic investigation the 3rd

1

There was an alley that our man liked to pass through.

This alley was not what you would call a “dead end” alley since walking along it took you from one main road to another; for this reason, our man preferred to think of it as a successful alley.
But, even if it were not, he still would have resisted calling it a “dead end”.

“An end to what?” he asked himself once.

These considerations led our man to believe that it was better to replace the word “alley” with “passage” or “lane”, or perhaps even with “byway”.

Yet our man had second thoughts.
He worried that “passage” was like what you read from a book, and though the parallel was interesting – since, like walking along an alley, reading a passage takes you from one place to another – it was too poetic to think about every morning.
As for “byway”, it was just not a word he often used.
In this way, he went from calling it an alley, to calling it a lane.

There was a lane that our man liked to pass through.

2

Now, this lane was dead in a different way.

It was deserted.

No doubt the lane had the usual ‘laney’ stuff:
There was the constant chirping of birds; there was a line of trees in which these birds hid from him; there were also the cats that prowled about; other things too.
But our man knew that such things lacked certain crucial qualifications, and this knowledge allowed him to pay less attention than he normally would have to the lane’s furniture each time he passed through.

To do otherwise, he believed – without knowing why –, would have been disastrous.

The lane also had a number of filthy garbage bins, and our man knew what these were; for this reason, he knew that they were packed with disgusting things from houses, and though the bins seemed to be full all the time, he never saw them being filled––or even emptied for that matter.
But this puzzle – without knowing why – was not one he dwelled very much.

Anyway, it was these considerations, and others like them, that led our man to say of the alley that it was dead empty.

3

Each morning he passed through the lane, and the few minutes that he spent doing so were the delight of his existence.

He walked slowly enough in order to adequately take in the feeling that it had come to fill him with. Yet he was careful to walk quickly enough not to over-tax it.

And although all this was a difficult balance to attain every morning, our man did well enough for the most part; that is not to say, however, that it was not a stressful time indeed, but as he often supposed:

“With the good comes the bad.”

Comforted by his acceptance – that he could not fully enjoy the lane whenever he passed it – he continued to nibble at its delight each morning.

At times of course, being the sort of man that he was, our man worried that, by not taking it all in at once, he was “letting a good thing go”, that by simply enjoying it in grams and ounces he was not getting its full weight.
These thoughts, when they occurred, were most frequent a few minutes after he had ended his daily stroll through the lane; with time, however, he learned to temper the urge to go back into the alley.
He learned to fight wanting to have his way with it.
But despite this triumph, he had trouble vanquishing the thought itself completely.

4

One morning, before rising, our man had the type of dream that tries to persuade its dreamer of something before dissolving into the day’s first scene.
These dreams, he knew, were not to be taken seriously.

So as sunlight filtered in slats across the ceiling of his bedroom, as he fell more deeply into the dream, as he failed to wake up at the usual time, as the dream became more insistent; he maintained the attitude of a person refusing to be distracted by a group of unexpected guests.
Yet, although he was used to controlling these kinds of temptations, this dream was remarkably unusual for him. When he finally woke from it, or rather, when it let him go, he was disturbed by what he had seen.

He was on his usual stroll through the lane when he stopped to examine the trees.
He was trying to see the birds, but each time he glimpsed one, its image would transform into a branch, or a group of leaves––and the chirping would persist.
He continued to do this for some time when he was startled by a sound:
The voices of men standing at the end of the lane calling to him threateningly, as though he were trespassing on private land.

5

He dressed quickly and skipped breakfast.

Running out the front door of his building, he skidded crazily around the corner and darted to the end of the road.

He crossed an intersection without looking.

Our man kept running.

6

When he finally arrived he could hardly believe his eyes.

Thousands of people arranged in rows and rows and rows filled the lane.
They were all facing him and all of them were laughing.
Not a single one was not.
They were laughing at him, and pointing.
Laughing and laughing.

Standing at the top of the lane, our man began to cry.

He could not do anything else.

–––––––––––––––––––––––– THE END

[For a brief essay revolving around the themes presented in this investigation, refer to the “Old Thought” On Looking.]