If it is your life

Death is not

I was losing consciousness. I felt like I was, if I wasnt. On this chair, awaking, I was waking and there were words but the words made no sense.

She was beside me, thank God, thank God.

But the whirring! And a rapidity about everything.

That was my life. It pretended to progress but didnt. Unless all was progress. The stuff that took one back was another way forward. Progress or not progress? It was a problem for some. Movement, its possibility. All these wise and questing individuals who existed decades prior to Plato, to Socrates, to old Zeno himself.

But it was not my head it was hers. I could barely distinguish it in the dark. I sensed it more. But to sense something is to distinguish it by other senses.

What went on inside her head? Frequently I thought I knew but I didnt at all. Even to think I knew was arrogance of the intellectual order. The intellectual order of males. There was no other kind.

But I was arrogant. Nothing new there. To know what went on in another’s head one firstly had to know what went on in one’s own. That made sense but not for long. My own head appeared straightforward. I never had the need to think. My body moved and my brain followed. ’Twas ever thus.

I paid close attention to her fingertips, the lines there. Those lines on the human body, on the skin of a human being, these were unique and an identifying feature.

Her body brought a smile to my face. It seemed as per a norm. What does that mean, as per a norm? It sounds insulting yet rang true. It connected to the human norm, she was as per the human norm. She was a normal human being, unlike myself. But I was a God. How else to describe myself? It was no egotistical feature, just the reality of my existence. It is said that each of us is God [a God]. This has become clear, it has been so since the birth of my children. I watched them grow and in their early months, these first couple of years, it was never more clear. And yet, and yet now, now at the present time in my life I see something amiss, is amiss, amiss with the argument.

I made a gulping sound; she was reaching her hands out to me, and picking up things, giving me other things.

Her throat also.

And my throat. I saw it when I shaved. The adam’s apple. What use had my own throat been lately. And why think of myself? I returned always to myself. It was at the nub of the failure. But what was the failure? I knew. If I could not answer such a question, and only such a question, if I could not answer it then I must somehow answer the questioner who will want to know the effect the problem has brought about, given that it is the questioner who sets the question, and the question is the problem. Or so I thought, but it has become apparent that the question only becomes a problem in relation to me, that in one most acute manner I am the problem.

Her pinkie reached out from the safety of her fist which had been clenched, but not so tightly, otherwise how could this movement of her pinkie have occurred.

It must have been a summer’s morning. I was shivering. This should have been a source of amusement. For myself, irony had been so very important, a means to survival. My blood was so very thin. Yet I was frightened to swallow a late-night brandy. I chuckled.

Here, she said.

What for me?

Yes.

It was her after all. No wonder I smiled. I asked was it another sweater. No, she said, it is a cup of tea.

I heard her chuckle then her hand was to my forehead, smoothing; and to my temple.

She brought me presents. She laid them next to me. One had been a sweater. I remembered it clearly. I had not requested the sweater but had wanted one. Then she was laying it beside me.

I said to her that I had not known I wanted the sweater. But you knew. You knew. I didnt even know I wanted it.

Oh but I saw ye were shivering, she said and laughed.

She saw I was shivering. Who then was the God?

But her laughter!

Gods cannot laugh. It was because I had answered. She liked it when I answered. When I did not she became depressed. She thought I was dying. I was not dying.

Recently I had been unable to answer. I wanted to answer but could not. I wanted to explain to her that I did not not answer intentionally. I did not care about the others. Only her, and even to her I found that I could not answer. I was ill-equipped, to speak. I could but would not. I was never speaking in a natural manner. I was not a useful person. I could not push myself. I listened in silence, prior and beyond, and preferred it so. I hoped the others would stop visiting. I cannot name them. This would be painful, for them.

I was an awkward patient. These were visitors who expected the visited to do the entertaining.

They had nothing to say and I had become incapable, of it.

What could I say to people, only speak when spoken to. Not reply.

My mouth opening, sounds issuing. They would listen and make sense of the sounds. People do listen.

It is true that she never did. She heard but refused to make sense of the utterances.

The faces of people reveal worry. I no longer opened my eyes.

She did not allow herself to be affected, and by not listening, by not listening

Are ye sleeping? she said.

I kept my eyes closed, eyelids closed. Yet tiredness had engulfed me, my God and engulfing, whatever engulfing

distrusting words too

Words used to be reaching, we were groping, human beings making use of words as a way forwards, it was progress towards, a progress

even could I be backwards, a groping towards a return, I was returning and seeking its continuation so that along the road my mind would numb

What eternity may be. I could drift, drifting. If I would lose consciousness, no.

Fingernails and zips.

I moved towards unconsciousness, the body being dragged, mind so being dragged. Yet when I revived, and was revived; fitly, I was fitly

How to stagger, which also is movement. I sought movement, I might stagger. A God could not stagger. My body. The stagger as an effect. How may there be effects of one’s body, affecting oneself, affects on one’s own body, effects of oneself

How would I speak of my death to her, speaking to somebody of that. Death is not, is not, isnay

What could I say to her, death is not, it is nought. Death is not really, it isnay

To her I could say it and not to others, it ended for them before that.