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.]

idiotic investigation the 2nd

Their craziness was palpable, easily observed.
Yet our man hardly batted an eye while he calmly read a magazine; he sat in the manner of a gentleman, with one leg tossed over another, casually tapping the air with his shoe.

He was reading a short story, the author of which he did not personally know; his ignorance, however, did not disturb him and his toe kept apace.

All around him the moonstruck circus grinded in a demented spiral as all its crazies began to trample one another, in some cases deliberately and in others unintentionally. Our man stared at his magazine, failing to notice the unhinged fray.
From his crooked form exuded a calmness that deflected the deranged festival.

That is, until a certain knee, attached to a leg belonging to a man that was in a hurry, collided with his tapping-toe and sent it flying in a frantic arc.

Our man, now thoroughly distracted, looked up from his magazine and watched the receding figure of the man that had jolted him; taped to his back was a battery-operated flashing sign that read:

“Out to lunch”.

Before he disappeared behind a wall, the man turned back to our man and, with a quick wave of his hand, yelled:

“Sorry I kneed you.”

The silence of this ‘k’ was consequential.
Our man systematically failed to hear silent letters; thus when the phrase – “Sorry I kneed you” – was heard, it seemed to our man that the rushing man was in urgent need.

Not being one to hold a grudge, a great passion to rise to the urgency of this occasion filled our man’s heart.
But at that exact moment, he also noticed all the other psychotics running about, trampling one another, screaming and honking car horns. This he assumed was a related case of urgency and so his heart expanded its worries to universal proportions.

Naturally, he began to wave at some of them in order to get their attention, and before he knew it they all stopped their foolery and stared at our man.
Not being one to lose an opportunity, our man pressed into a thorough disquisition on the topic of need; this thoughtful tract proceeded for some minutes and the crazies were strangely transfixed.
He was launching bullet proof arguments and chains of insightful dialectics; he was spouting rhetorical questions that he deftly flipped back to whenever the crowd lost track of his main points; he managed to hold up an imperceptible rhyme scheme; he sang a song midway in order to rouse the passions of the elders in the back; he whipped them all into a single body with a trillion eyes.
At certain points in his tirade the crowd of lunatics cried, nails pulling at their faces and fingers at their hair, at others points they laughed, palms slapping and knees flying; they were a massive instrument played by our man’s verbal flight, his keen intelligence was the motor of their actions.

He resolutely folded the magazine into his coat pocket, checked the time on his wristwatch and stood up from the bench. The crazy circus persisted and he walked to where the man had disappeared behind the wall, all the while thinking of the statement:

“Sorry I kneed you.”

The man was urinating at the wall; this, however, did not disturb our man who walked up to him and asked:

“Do you require assistance?”

The man was startled by our man’s sudden appearance and proximity as well, it seemed, as by his crooked form; assuming that he was there to harm him while in his vulnerable position, he extracted a knife from his pocket.
He held it up in order for its impressive glint to be observed and smartly pressed it into our man’s heart.
This produced a little dahlia of blood around the handle which grew downwards.

The man zipped up his trousers and assured our man, who was now dying, that he was not in need.
He was obviously clever for he immediately saw the mistake that our man had made: failing to hear the silent ‘k’ led him to a wrong interpretation of the statement “Sorry I kneed you”––hearing it as a request and not a mere apology.

“Sorry I misled you” he said, “it must have killed you when you realized.”
It seemed that the man experienced a glimmer of regret.
He extracted the knife from the dahlia’s centre and walked toward the psychotics.

The last thing that sprang across the screen of our man’s mind were the words

A knife with a silent ‘k’ is still a knife.

The lunatic show danced and danced and danced and danced and danced.

–––––––––––––––––––––– THE END

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

idiotic investigation the 1st

One time, I was in a cab. When I arrived at my destination, I paid the driver and shut the door before heading toward a building across the street. Just as he began to drive off, I decided not to let him pass first, that I would cross in front of his car and not behind. As a result, he stopped his car abruptly so that I would not be harmed. This decision – to cross in front – troubled me, and while I hurried across the road I felt that I was leaving a trail of something ugly behind me; thinking about this trail brought me down while in the elevator.

Suddenly, while thinking about the cab and the way he had to stop so abruptly, the electricity went out and I was no longer in an elevator but a dark box that was suspended between the second and third floors; as a result, my thoughts about the cab and my decision to cross in front of it subsided because I deftly coined the word suspendevator.

I thought about writing it down, but the action of writing it down proved to be too much to think about all at once, so I thought about the thought of writing it down and that too proved to be difficult, but in a different way, so I settled for just saying it out loud:

“Suspendevator.” My voice echoed down the shaft.

Anyway, while suspended, I got to thinking about some of the decisions I’d taken that day––aside from the one concerning the cab (only the most recent); it was by now almost 10 am, but I had made a number of weighty ones already.

Long ago, this hectic lifestyle prompted me to keep lists. Here’s today’s list (so far),
1. Decision to get out of bed at my customary time.
2. Decision to have the breakfast I am accustomed to having.
3. Decision to wear my own clothes.
4. Decision to leave the house without my keys.
5. Decision to tell my mother I would visit her in order to borrow her keys so that I could          go home after all the other things I would have decided to do were done.
At this point I pencil in
6. Decision to cross in front of a cab.
7. Decision to name my mother’s elevator a suspendevator.
Reading over it again has made me realise that decision 5 was pure improvisation, and now that I think about it, this unusual exertion might have been what led to (the rash) decision 6––but I dare not decide on that now.
I fold the paper back into my pocket.

As you might expect, my intellect was taxed at this point in the day and the suspendevator’s darkness was thus soothing; I thought about the important similarity between the words soothing and something, but also about their even more important differences: saying “something soothing” is not like saying “soothing something”; in fact, something soothing is not necessarily soothing something.
These considerations led to agitation and so I put a stop to them right there.

When the electricity returned  the elevator did as well and this made me sad because now I had to carry on: it deposited me at my mother’s floor, where I stood at her door to take a
8. Decision to use my index finger to ring the bell.

Of course, I was aware that my index finger would probably resent this decision since it was already used in the elevator to press the button for my mother’s floor (an event I don’t remember very well and which thus does not qualify to be a decision), but I went through with it anyway and hoped that it wouldn’t turn on me.
(If you ignore problems they go away; if not, then pretending is just as good as being.)
At any rate, I was deftly considering the notion of mini-decisions, one that you can’t be aware of, but I quickly lost track of these miniatures which dispersed like marbles. So I said it out loud just so that I could remember it later.

“Mini-decisions.” My voice was absorbed by the door.

When the bell sounded, I instinctively retracted my hand, but my finger remained postured (the decision to curl into my palm was yet to be taken), so when my mother opened the front door she saw that I was pointing at her. She told me it was rude to point and I resented her for this chastisement––thinking that perhaps my finger was getting back at me for the labor I appointed it to; but I also thought that I only resented it because of the denial I was in about having abused it twice in a row.
I felt bad about this and I look apologetically at my finger while I crossed the threshold.

When I left with the keys, I took the
9. Decision to walk down the stairs.