Tuesday, December 12, 2001: The Fugue

I have been in a furious temper for about a week now. Shortly after the time when the temper first arose, I walked past a chalkboard outside a cafe with an inspiring quotation written on it. What they describe as the 'red mist' - the fugue of anger - descended and I considered kicking over the billboard and stamping on it. What prevented me was not embarrassment, because the advantage of the 'red mist' is that one is completely relieved of caring about oneself, but that I assessed myself with the coldness that often accompanies my anger and felt repulsed by the 'meaningfulness' of the action, which would have been in contradiction to the type of blind fury that I felt. I would not like to think that my icy fury could have been the basis for the cafe patrons' humorous - and worse still, sympathetic - anecdotes. I wanted to do something completely disgusting. In a similar situation a long time ago, I cast my mind quickly over the possibilities to hand and decided to punch a stranger in the face, randomly. I must have felt a similar coldness, because although I was in a fugue, I rejected the first girl that passed me as she was too small and weak, and chose the captain of our school's first fifteen rugby team, as he chanced to be the next that passed. It happens that I don't remember the moment of punching him, but I don't want to arouse any sympathy. I hurt him quite badly and have regretted it since.

The beauty of this type of fugue is one no longer cares about one's own existence. I could expose myself to the greatest danger, and not care at all. To be relieved for a period of this weight is ecstacy; it's the type of feeling that also occurs, for instance, when your little sister, or your baby I suppose, is in danger, and you are completely relieved of care for yourself. Occasionally the fugue has had positive consequences; for example, I saw a man hitting his wife, and was overcome, and blindly harangued him, although he definitely intended to beat me up; in fact, to say I didn't care about myself is wrong; I WANTED to be abused; I was hungry for blood, and for my own as much as anyone elses. In this mood I sought mutual destruction, with complete detachment.

I suppose it is a survival instinct; in certain situations, you need to lose consideration for your own safety; you must be able to calculate the possibilities with what amounts to boredom. But I despise myself, and my genealogy, because in me this nerve - the wick that lights the fugue - is so near to the surface. 17 December 2001 - Will called while I was looking at ILE, reading it with a sense of frustration at how boring it is. I lay on the bed a little too long and was late for our breakfast, after the walk down the hill. I met him outside the ferry terminal, where it was practically black and windy - his face looked strange and brown, and his hair was silvery and sticking up.

As we walked up the street beside the service station, he wanted to talk about Knut Hamsun. "What is it you like about him?" His hands were shaking and he grinned compulsively, even though he was trying to keep a straight face - I said, "The way he captures the strangeness of the relationships between people, like in Dostoevsky." "Oh, yes," he said, but by then we were in front of the bar in the cafe, being jostled, so I said let's wait ...

When we sat down we talked about something else, then he interrupted and said, "Let's talk about Knut Hamsun," his hands, and the silvery points of his cheeks, shaking ... he continued,

"The thing I like is, the way he writes about the mysteries, the things that people hide ... I don't think people want you to understand them, because if you understood them, ... something terrible would happen. And you can't, anyway ... I think Nagel goes crazy because he tries to understand the mysteries. He's a schizophrenic ... for example, he wears the bright yellow suit ... you forget that as you're reading, because it's only mentioned at the start.

"I'm reading a book about the families of schizophrenics, that says the family members will choose someone to intentionally mystify, like a scapegoat - that's the schizophrenic."

"How do they do it?"

"I can't remember ... I've been smoking too much pot while I've been reading."

Last time I talked to Will, he told me about working at his father's kiwifruit orchard. They use many different kinds of chemicals and techniques to get the plants to obey them. In order to fool the plants into producing a lot of fruit, they spray them with a chemical that makes them think they're dying. The person spraying must be covered from head to foot and have an oxygen tank to breathe from, and they must not drink alcohol for a month afterwards. The male kiwifruit plants are killed immediately they have pollinated the females, and after a plant has fruited, it is pulled up and destroyed. It's possible for the plant to continue bearing fruit each season, but it would not be as abundant as a new plant.

[Regarding the above: "Though my grasp of history is a bit shaky, and though my capacity for romanticising easily dwarfs that of the average acidhead, I hope I have captured at least the essence of this unappreciated genius." -Woody Allen, "The Earl of Sandwich."]

Monday, December 11, 2001

It was a hot morning. The thought of having to work wasn't bad, as I looked forward to the loss of myself, the easiness of working by numbers - but after I had spent a pleasant hour rushing an essay about Emerson - not looking up, but just moving things quickly around on the computer screen, inventing deft turns of phrase and charming connections - I had to spend another hour and a half wrestling to save all my essays onto disk. So it was the 'err-errrrr-er' of the floppy drive, too slow, I couldn't finish it all in time, and I had wanted to index it, but 'master document' wouldn't work on things saved to floppy and ------!

Emily, my queen, I wish you'd written a book, or kept a diary, so I could live each moment with you.

And then the sky is grey, the path to the ferry like a solid tunnel through the air - and the wet rain! Thank God!

An index to old kitty entries etc

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I was in it ... I profited off it.]
I used this stuff.
I sell it. Evidently I've been mixed up in situations ------------------------- the Jewish situation - which were none of my business, I had no business being there. Even so I described them ... after my fashion.
-- Louis-Ferdinand Celine.