Recently I’ve been struggling with my symptoms. I try to ignore them. I don’t believe ignorance is bliss. I prefer cashew nuts to peanuts, but peanut butter to cashew butter. I don’t own any David Hockney prints. I can recite the first few lines of Paradise Lost but tend not to. I don’t have a private pension. This morning I had a bag stolen on a train but didn’t report it. If a chair is uncomfortable, I sit on the floor. I learned a lot from Bart Simpson’s Guide to Life. My brother recently called and said: G told me you’ve not been doing too well recently. I said: I’m very well, what do you mean, what the fuck does G know?
I don’t spread rumors. I’m in a house full of doors with no entrance. I currently have two mosquito bites on my left wrist. I prefer swimming in lakes or the sea when it’s calm enough. I haven’t completely lost the plot. My dream for a few weeks was to be the first male to play the role of MOUTH in Not I. Before I had a root canal and the dentist removed a tangle of dead nerves from deep inside my jaw, I used to get mouth ulcers every week. I prefer starting to finishing. I have three old laptops in my brother’s wardrobe. I do not coach CEOs. I wonder how long I can get away with what my mother once called ‘my sorry ramshackle lifestyle’.
If something is on offer, I’ll consider buying it. In some moods I’m talkative but it tires me out. I would have liked to have been a secretary in Andy Warhol’s factory. I’ve never had a hernia. After an operation on my trachea, I woke up suddenly from the anaesthetic and said: oh, I’m not dead. (The nurse: me neither, unfortunately). I don’t live for the weekend. On some days I think I should move country every few months, on others that I should stay still and live a quiet, simple life. I don’t own a suit. I’m not good company.
My symptoms are uncertain. I get out of more events that I’m invited to. I’m not in love. A psychotherapist once told me: one problem with you is that you don’t have any values. I used to buy cheap clothes and bin them when someone made a negative comment about them. I don’t have money in an index fund. On some days, most of my trousers are too tight, particularly around the hips. I used to ring people I found in my mother’s phone book and ask if they had any room at the inn. I like when Google Docs incorrectly tells me that a word is misspelled. I’d like to be under the sea. I’ve been diagnosed with a mild to moderate mood disorder but I don’t want to be medicated for it. Where possible I do not attend meetings.
There’s nothing new under the sun or the floorboards. I have suitcases in six people’s houses. I might be getting somewhere, but maybe not. I’m better suited to the role of AUDITOR. I floss irregularly. I am not employed. I write well if the washing machine is on, ideally on an eco-cycle. I don’t waste food. I-thou. I don’t talk about my ‘headspace’. I forget the names of architectural styles.
For a while I was a knowledge worker. When L asks: what’s your favourite porn genre? I say: I don’t watch porn, I’ve never watched it. I have vague allergies. I remember the eighth crack commandment: never keep no weight on you. I don’t put people at ease. I don’t mind the fact I’m constitutionally ambivalent, but not when I need to decide something. I don’t like my facial structure, posture, stomach or hands. I once flew to Amsterdam, slept on the train station floor, and then flew back the next morning.
I don’t plan to run for political office. I can remember what someone told me half an hour ago. As a teenager I started lifting weights but neglected my legs. (The school gym: sweat and rust). Norma Jean is not my lover. I don’t ever buy travel insurance. I try to delay the first coffee of the morning by ninety minutes. No one ever told me I wouldn’t amount to anything: they (they?) said I could become whatever I wanted. A phlebotomist once said to me: you’re a bit contrarian, but that’s alright, I think you’ll grow out of it. If I’m too hungry I can’t come. I used to sleep on a Teenage Ninja Hero Turtle pillow. In a plastic sheet in the inside pocket of a suitcase, I have a few scanned pages of Systema Naturae.
I’ve never stolen goods worth £200 or more. I would like to referee a cage fight between two of my friends and their dogs. I am partial to the work of Natalia Ginzburg. I never suggest that people contain multitudes. Somehow, I get by. I like to open the bible at random and read a verse. (Luke, 18:27: ‘But He said: ‘The things that are impossible with people are possible with God.”) I’ve been told that this method might be helpful for alleviating my symptoms. I don’t think my brother eats enough.
I’m good at getting into things and getting back out of them. A teacher once said to me: you sit there silently grinning away, but I know you’re the puppeteer. (Every few weeks, I masturbated while imagining this teacher gave me a blowjob). For a period I preferred Burger King to McDonalds. I bite my nails and dig ingrown hairs out of my face. I’m not a ‘radical realist’. I would not like to be on a graduate programme. On some days, I can barely keep my trousers up, but can’t find my belt. I don’t feel welcome in the jungle. I rarely have dealings with Virginia Woolf. I strongly prefer not to make plans. I specialise in ghosts, shadows, vacuums, abysses, empty content and illegible handwriting. I don’t aspire to have a house in the country. I’m not worried because I don’t smoke. If I ever make decent money I will sponsor a prize for bad writing. I could be anyone but I’m not.
I don’t do impressions of Werner Herzog. (Do I?) I am a recognisable type. I can only really think about two days ahead. I don’t speak with vocal fry. I’m not happy I won’t witness the extermination. I don’t write in praise of ‘the poetics of provisionality.’ It is difficult and maybe impossible to describe my symptoms in a way that is clear or helpful. I would like a pet lizard. (Name: Iguana the Don). I like dogs but don’t like the idea of organising my life around one. I don’t trust myself to start log fires or put out candles. My father secretly ran up gambling debts of thousands of pounds but was sure he could make it all back, either through one perfect final bet or via his cryptocurrency business. (This was ten years ago: if he’d stuck around, he’d have been vindicated). The Italian, British and Moroccan police have my email address.
I don’t respond well to pressure. I often feel hurried even though there’s no rush at all. I reluctantly have dealings with bedsheets. I have two new voicemails from the British transport police. I haven’t read my childhood script. If it all goes to pot, I will advertise as a hypnotherapist. I’m a louse. I like to lie in the sun for twenty to thirty minutes but then I need to move. I like shared silences with three particular people, otherwise I don’t care for it. I don’t attempt to write poetry. I search for a Master in order to identify, comment on and exploit their flaw.
As a child I smashed our front room window twice and my aunty’s kitchen window once. My uncle pretended to be a policeman on the phone and said: if you do the washing up for your mother I won’t come and arrest you. I once made a detailed plan to run away and hitchhike to Pingu’s igloo. Ryanair flights and the Megabus have allowed me to travel a lot and mostly pointlessly. I like bad food. I have a flimsy understanding of the psychosexual stages of development, but have never made the effort to clarify it. Where possible, I do nothing. I am not looking to write or sell a novel. I remember the steel pipe that Bulgakov’s country doctor put in a little girl’s throat. My accent is uncertain. I don’t write anti-poetry.
Along with Breton, I hasten to add that future Surrealist techniques do not interest me. I don’t live in Bangkok. I make a note to myself: no more going back and fiddling. I’m not going to run away and never wonder why. I have difficulties with deliberation. When I think of my father’s face, I see a moustache pinned to a blurry pink blob. When I was ten I told my mother that I didn’t want any more birthdays. I don’t put my writing into Comic Sans to check if it’s good. (Try reading Kafka in Comic Sans). I only buy food I plan to eat on the same day. On some days my face looks slim, on others it’s distended.
I might be experiencing a momentary anaesthesia of the heart. I’d like to write a journal about my difficulties with giving up smoking but I don’t smoke. I don’t use the adjectives ‘tremendous’ or ‘lovely’. I like watching little birds tilt their heads and imagining they’re saying: ‘you want some?’. I don’t have dealings with footnotes. I have read a collection of short stories that directly lifted each of its premises from stories in Roberto Bolaño’s Last Evenings on Earth. (I have also written a collection like this). I enjoy clear, propulsive, head-deadening prose. I am balding slowly; at first I was alarmed, now I’m indifferent. I don’t use the toilet as a private office. I’ve probably started too late.
My favourite book as a child was The Yellow Pages. I played the role of Noah in the Year Six nativity (very poorly.) I recommend the work of Ann Quinn, but not if you have an uncertain stomach. I’m a typist. If I’d been born twenty years later, I’d be a looksmaxxer. The dealers won’t want my pictures. I consider evil deeds. I don’t write stories about eunuchs. My mother and father were Bartlebys and I am too. I’d like to paint well, but I’m too embarrassed to go to painting classes. I don’t read Henry James. A psychotherapist once told me: if we cut the shit, we can say that you are in desperate need of a father figure. I’m nice enough on the whole but quite selfish. I don’t like when people say ‘just a few sleeps’ or ‘let’s put socks on your little feets’ to adults or babies. I don’t plan to write a book about Nietzsche or Schopenhauer. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to compare me to a mirage of a cow standing in a field in the rain. I need money.
I have not always wanted a birds eye view of my room. I often have dealings with middle-aged women. Last week G offered me unsolicited financial advice which I would have done well not to ignore. I was not present when Paul Verlaine shot Arthur Rimbaud in Brussels. I agree with Merleau-Ponty: the museum gives us a thief’s conscience. I was recently tricked into trying to find a story that a writer had included invented excerpts from in another story. I know the whereabouts of some hoodlums and pranksters. I am not consumed by literary ambition. If someone I knew published a book, I’d think: good. I will not lock in but I might get locked out. I don’t have reading privileges at presidential libraries. Sometimes I just stop and can’t get going again. It’s always the body first. Unfortunately I believe I can write a thousand pages about anything.
I don’t know people who know people. I’m free but clumsy. I prefer not to make plans. As a child I asked my mother if I would be an old lady when I grew up. I’m a street rat. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve gained access to the content of my own mind, which wasn’t necessarily a positive development. I don’t care about owning a house, but I’d like a room that’s always free for me to go to. There was a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service at the end of our road. (My mother: that’s where all the scratters go). I’m not a professional. I don’t consider myself as a problem to solve. I keep half an eye on current events. I am not a persecutor, rescuer, or a victim. I don’t depend on the morning sun, but it’s helpful. I like having one foot in and one foot out. I eat a banana a day, sometimes an apple as well.
I can’t take in information from PowerPoints. It doesn’t take long to walk around my annual exhibition. Nobody has offered to find me a position. I lived in London for a few years without realising. I’m envious of full beards. I don’t believe in intellectual biography. I once told a woman I was being sectioned to avoid going to her house; then I went to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey at the cinema. People are just spheres, cones and cylinders. I think reading and writing are boring but so is everything else. (I enjoy being bored). I’d like to meet Bob Mortimer by chance in Home Bargains. No reason ever was given. I go to galleries to look at two to three pictures. I don’t take creatine. My grandma to my brother: good god, you get bigger every time I see you.
I’m a ghostwriter. I don’t take painkillers or believe I’m surrounded by floating limbs. My brother doesn’t drink alcohol but says it’s nothing to do with our alcoholic father. I drink rarely and can’t differentiate between cheap and pricey wines. I’ve never seen a harpsichord in real life. Arguably I’m a practitioner of the false novel. I’d like to be a father with no children and a writer with no books. I like the Russian word for notebook: bloknot. Even if it becomes commercially viable in my lifetime, I don’t plan to go to space.
Recently I realised that I’ve written a version of the same story about fifteen times. I copy down the words of Francis Ponge: ‘the word OISEAU contains all the vowels. Very good, I approve.’ On bad days I’d even describe my face as bulbous. Every now and again I feel the stirring of vague humanitarian aspirations. As a child I enjoyed reading instruction manuals. If I made more money I’d buy a little flat in a sunny town by the sea, and fill one room with books, DVDs, CDs and magazines. I am not green-fingered. I don’t theorise seriously. I defend when necessary. I don’t plan to write human interest stories.
Where possible, I don’t get involved in drama triangles. I think I have a woman problem. My mother: it’s just nice to do something that’s a bit different. I am not dynamite. I do not shower people with gifts. I keep up some appearances. I am not the hungry caterpillar. I don’t pay the bachelor tax. I have a certificate confirming that I have competent counselling and listening skills. (Actually, two certificates). I once put an advert on a supermarket notice board for a graduate scheme vacancy for the Ministry of Silly Walks. I don’t readily offer geo-political commentary. I don’t think Bion and Beckett were much good for each other.
My symptoms come and go. Right now I think they’re on the wane. I’m going to call my brother back and we’ll have a pleasant conversation. In passing I’m going to tell him that G hasn’t been doing too well recently, I’m worried about him. I’ll suggest it might be something serious, but that he shouldn’t think about it too much. Then I’ll ask how he is and what he’s planning to have for dinner.