Spurious - Lars Iyer [41]
W. says he’s since discovered that Groessen, in the last paragraph, can also be translated dimension. He’s not sure what the implications of that might be, though.
Has he had a thought over the weekend?, I ask W. No, he says, not one. He never thinks when he’s with me. But I think sometimes, W. notes, sometimes I’m capable of thought. There’s sometimes a parting of the clouds, it’s amazing. For a few minutes, I make sense, I speak clearly and thoughtfully, and everyone is amazed. Sal was impressed at Oxford, says W., remembering our conversation in the beer garden. Ah yes, the beer garden, I say, a moment of illumination.
The problem is that I fear time, W. has decided. I have no stretches of empty time in my day. W., by contrast, always allows for empty time in his day. When he eats, he eats, he doesn’t work. When I eat, by contrast, it is in front of the computer screen, crumbs dropping between the keys.—‘What time do you get up?’, says W., wanting to be taken through my work day. At six o’clock, I tell him. He gets up at four, he says, sometimes earlier. I got up at five yesterday, I tell him.—‘And what did you do?’ I wrote, I tell him.—‘But did you think?’, W. asks. ‘You can’t think and write’.
Yes, my problem is that I fear empty time, W. is sure of it. Does he fear it? No, he says, but then his house is nicer than my flat. And his living room walls aren’t pink.—‘What were you thinking when you painted those walls?’ It was to bring out the colour of the wood, I tell him. Pink, though! Why pink? It would depress him, says W.
‘So what are you going to do about your leak?’, says W. I show him the kitchen. The dehumidifiers, working twenty-four hours a day, are sucking out the damp. They fill up every twelve hours.—‘That’s a lot of water’, says W. ‘Where does it come from?’ No one knows, I tell him. The greatest experts on damp are completely baffled.
W. wants to understand me, he says. He’s decided to list my affects. You can do it for any living thing, he says. A tick, for example, responds to heat and warmth.—‘It’s a very simple being. Like you. You’re simple’.
‘We’ll start with the living room’, he says. Am I taking notes? I’m writing on a post-it pad.—‘It’s cold’, he says. ‘Write that down. I’m freezing. How can you live like this? And it’s dark’, he says. ‘There’s no light. I can’t see anything. And it’s damp. That’s another affect’. It’s better than it was, I tell him.
Why am I always putting vaseline on my lips?, W. wonders.—‘Vaseline’, he says, that’s another of your affects. The internet. That’s what scholarship is for you, isn’t it? How can you go on reading that bilge? You’ve got no honour. No shame. No goodness’.
W. looks out of the window at the rotting plants in the yard.—‘Horror. That’s your other affect, isn’t it? Look at it out there. It’s shit. How can you live like this?’
W. is delineating the basic categories, he says.—‘Television. You like TV, don’t you?’, says W. I tell him I don’t watch it that much.—‘I’m not surprised. The remote is broken. How can you watch anything?’
‘So what else do you do? Are there any affects for you in the bathroom?’ I’m indifferent to the bathroom, I tell him.—‘What do you think about when you’re in there?’ Nothing, I tell him. You, I tell him, and he laughs.
‘Well then, your bedroom. Is that where you do your reading? You don’t really read anything, do you? You don’t read. And what about the kitchen? Those stacks of tinned fish. You eat the same thing every day, don’t you? Exactly the same thing!’ W. is a believer in a varied diet, he says.—‘I try to vary what I eat. Not like you’.
W. concludes he has a larger range of affects than me. He lives with someone. That’s what does it.—‘Otherwise I’d be a sad fucker like you’. Of course W.’s house is much nicer, he points out. It’s not cold, for one thing. Or dark. Or damp.
The previous owners dug right down to the foundations to get rid of the damp, W. tells me.