[This essay is linked to, though entirely independent of, idiotic investigation the 4th.]
The birth of twins must resound like an eternal betrayal.
The first one to exit the womb leaves behind an unfamiliar gap; the remaining twin is gripped in the terror of sudden isolation; the biological memory heaves with denial of this unexplainable void; the sudden shock-leading-to-hatred of the womb.
What a hateful fate.
The twin that stays behind, the twin born second, even when it finally emerges into the light of the world, must always remain in the memory of that sudden seclusion, in the harrowing emotion of an emptiness beside you.
How could it forget the First trauma?
It must forever hate this.
What a fateful hate.
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Isn’t it easier to think of one thing than to think of two? And isn’t that why we use the word twins: to re-member the two that are in fact one; to remember that it is only some trick of nature that led to this life long double vision?
When a thing is split, it is easy to worry about the uncertain precision of half.
–– One becomes two; then one asks of two: “Are we identical?”
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Of course, the second twin is then born.
Of course it is given light and smell, words and boredom.
The carnival sweeps it up and blunders on; I know that things will be fine …
But hasn’t it lost half of itself in the womb? How can it enjoy any distraction?
A half is eternally distracted.
A hateful fate.
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It is almost a cruel joke that the Romans had a god of transition.
His name was Janus.
Janus, the god of transition.
(What is a transition? How can it have a god?)
It is almost crueler compensation that they awarded this god January.
The first month of the year as a gift?
Perhaps the gift was intended to distract Janus from his misery …
(What is a start? How can it have a god?)
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The second twin is in eternal transition, forever recovering from this transition.
It is an eternal expression of pain.
A fateful hate.
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We say of a thing that it is two-faced (even janus faced).
This judgment is flung wherever deception turns its head.
We cast it at things that we fear have strayed.
Are twins two-faced? Is the double vision a lie?
If so, then which one is the deceiver?
Perhaps the second is the false actor: scrambling onto the stage, idiotically and late.
It must be a strange hallucination to see the second one emerge from the womb.
All its trauma, now a cliche.
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We all know the feeling of a lost object; some of us even know the feeling of the weight that is missing beside us in a bed.
Imagine that you are lying there, that the storm thunders outside your window, that the world rages, terrifying you with its lights, its pains, its distractions.
And you are there, searching for a weight that you don’t quite remember, but that you were born with a desire for.
Now imagine that someone hands you the object––the missing twin.
Here it is! Fit and fleshy!
––What a terrible disappointment.
The missing weight returns to the bed, but the fear experienced is a heavier blanket. Such intense desires can never be sated.
A hateful fate.
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Represented sculpturally with two faces, Janus looked back on past things but also to the things to come: two faces facing opposite directions.
Turn the sculpture so that the one face is now looking in the other’s direction.
Which one is the liar?
idiotic investigations 