occurred to me I was awake. From here was difficult. I had to remind myself that the ‘that’ was absent and its significance, its significance, the ‘absence’ or non-existence, or negation, and to piece together, or distinguish the several parts. In normal, or regular – I speak of the day-to-day – discourse or communication the sentence would have written as two part comprising two clauses: ‘It occurred to me that I was awake.’ A writer of prose might well have used a ‘that’ and therefore lost the meaning for the second clause ‘that I was awake’ slips into a past, or simply different, time zone. Whereas a poet might have written, or expressed the sentence separated by line-spacing, thus:
It occurred to me
I was awake.
Finer prose-writers are wary of making use of the poet’s devices. They do so, but cautiously. What is clearer now is the separation between the two clauses is not just ambiguous but offers a minimum two meanings and these may be conjoined principal statements: ‘It occurred to me’ and ‘I was awake’. And might be expressed, or written, ‘It occurred to me (I was awake).’ The difficulty is the use of brackets suggesting a banality which amounts not to tautology but, upon examination, of one statement the other may be found. Nought can occur if one is asleep. If the act of occurrence has occurred then certainly one is awake.
Following this I can express it thus: ‘I was awake; this realisation had taken hold of me’ and, the corollary, that I might be expressed as a sentence; if so the use of the term ‘might’ is the key to the evaporation of the space between us (me and reality). From here it follows that I may or may not be so expressed. I was aware of that. Oh God.
THIS HAS NO
TITLE
What is escape is not so much escape as the unplanned. My life had reached a point, deteriorated to the point, been arrested prior to this, this point, utter disintegration. The desire for death is desire and desire is activity. I had avoided it in other words, where escape is not avoidance, and was looking for a why, why why why.
Get a grip of your emotions!
This was a scream. Sitting on a bus too, my god, a bus, I was on an actual bus journey. Other people dont have these problems. How do I know! Can I get inside their head, their brain, their fuck sake what
Everybody does. In one way or another they do. The whole of humanity. I was sitting there, returning home, on a bus, the bus, my bus, and the wife was waiting. Where had I been!
We can only return. I knew that. I had no desires, expected none, was over the worst, all of it. Equilibrium obtained, he said with relish. Having returned, returning. Before returning one has to have returned.
What did she think what would she say?
But what did I see was the real question. Okay, it was nighttime; nighttime is the righttime. Were it daytime, oh god things would have been visible. As it was, no. Immaterial reality. God with a capital letter. Not even the moon. Fucking nothing. Inside the bus was different. I preferred inside. Persons are good. I watched the woman in front, the back of her head, neck, and shoulders; her hair straggling over her red coat. Long dark hairs, unbrushed, although she couldnt, couldnt have brushed them, had she wanted, she would not have been able to brush them, tidying them so to speak. I could have, could have straightened them, reached to her. But she would not have wanted me to do that. I would have done it for her. Women are, and we, we males
My wife sometimes
forget it.
Others avoid touching, personal data concerning ‘the body’; bodies, bodily functionings, meat and blood and bones; one exercises the cleaver, the chopper, to do with bodies, I never minded that; others may. I was always good, having the liking, for people’s bodies and could always touch them and would have been good in that type of job. Instead it wasnt, was not to be.
I hated stores most of all. Stores. I was always too cold, too cold. Or hot. I was hot too! I was. Discomfort, discomforted. Why was that? Discomfited. That was stores for you. And you didnt see persons you liked. Just persons you had to see and if women came down from the office they always went in to see the storesclerk. We used to smile and be friendly and they smiled back but they never stopped to say hullo: hullo. I envied them walking about, women from the office, and girls, their shapes; girls have shapes, taking their messages to people, I would have taken a message, in itself this would have been the message, its delivery; give it to me, I shall take it, execute the charge. I would have liked such a position.
The way of the world. Had I been female I would have found more suitable employment.
Women’s positions suited me better. Women are good at touching. But I was born a male. We are born into the world and the few choices we have are determined by that.
The busdriver was angry. I would have driven the bus better. I dont think he was good. He pressed too easily on the brake pedal and people were hurled this way and that. Elderly people too, and their bodies, fragility, wrists and joints and so easily damaged, bruised limbs, the limbs of elderly people, bone diseases. This man was not simply pressing the pedal he was kicking and booting it. No wonder the passengers didnt like him. And they didnt, they certainly did not like this man. Perhaps too he was racist and was annoyed because persons foreign to him were on the bus; many foreign persons, and languages. Their homes were damaged.
I think of places and not countries. Countries are for rich people, their determination, the freedom to accumulate, building their moats and defence arsenals.
Then the man coming along the aisle, a big heavy fellow, he sat down next to me. I knew he would. I had made the space. He noticed I had and nearly smiled, just how he looked around the eyes like it was almost a smile and hoped I would notice it. A recognition of the other’s humanity. There would be this between us. Otherwise he would not have smiled, not as an outer expression; but I was very conscious of his large body, a squeezing-in, squeezing-in.
Had this been a revolutionary situation.
People dump their bags and their coats on the spare seat next to them to stop folk sitting down, in case their bodies ‘touch’. I make space for them. I like to see them there and think alongside with them. They make thoughts go in a different way. So we are in the world together. But why are they so large, the fleshiness, so all fleshy? When our first child was a baby she had rolls of blubber on the upper thighs. I cleaned the diahorrea, sluicing between the rolls, how red the skin, how sore it must have been yet she bore it in wonder.
The big guy resembled a murdered victim. One knows the signs, one comes to recognise them. His profile was strange. He looked around when he sat down, almost timidly. He was used to being watched. Persons stared. He knew this also. Were he to glance without warning, rabbits in headlights, staring, transfixed. They would have been. Had he glanced round he would have seen such persons, had he been quick, these fellow travellers.
We journey not as one.
A human being who sits beside me, looks at the same things and sees them so that for one split second we might experience the same thoughts. Then if the whole bus, if everybody, all sitting there, if something happens outside to interrupt everybody in their own thoughts to suddenly look at the same thing, and see it, for that split second.
I was wrong to say he resembled a murdered victim. I jumped to conclusion. My wife rightly pilloried me for this.
There are times I believed myself on the wrong bus, as if it were the wrong country. Maybe I stepped on a bus in a different dimension. In this dimension no one arrives
