32.

Yesterday at the supermarket I became aware of a little old lady who may have been talking at me in the tinned vegetable aisle, I expect I briefly considered pretending not to have noticed her before I committed to taking any real interest & formulated the assumption that she was hoping to retrieve an item from a shelf that was too high for her to reach. A jar of beans, there you go little old lady. Thank you tall young man, how kind.

I expect she was some kind of goddess in a not very good disguise: come on lovely we’ve seen that one a million times! Acknowledging her had the strange effect of causing me to think of the other people in the supermarket as something like friends (whereas usually the tragedy is more unmediated). The spell lasted until I was driving out, I stopped in plenty of time to let a different old lady cross in front of me on her way into the shops & somehow perceived what an ingracious old biddy she was. Probably the same goddess.

The night before had been a difficult one. I’m not sure if I mentioned it already, it might’ve been a me we agreed should be cancelled. Don’t feel sorry for him, he’s really little more than an erased recording. But I admit that he scares me. I realise he’s a little like a haunting, a me with even worse teeth & a perpetual bee in his bonnet. Maybe he’s right — that look in his eyes — maybe it’s my fault, maybe I repressed him? Maybe I caused the hurt that became the fiery black holes of his pupils, pointed little pinpricks that somehow seem bigger than my soul. Maybe we shouldn’t have cancelled him? We’ve just made the problem worse. But sure you guys just forget about it, I suppose he’s my ghost, I’ll figure out the meaning of what he’s asking, how to release him — give him peace I mean.

I suppose his peace is my peace: it’s not really peace, is it, if it has different pieces. I stayed up most of the night imagining things I should say to no-one. Now I consider them said, in the fresh light of this new day, but then they still sought to be uttered, in the cold light of that old one. Hours passed & eventually I resolved to do some sleeping. I ignored all the agitating thoughts & cast my attention over my body like a searchlight whose beam was a single sensitive finger. It beamed itself down as a semi-autonomous hand when it found the thorn in my side. You realise in those kinds of moments how it couldn’t be more precise: we are our own best surgical device. My fingers fall between my muscles like a weirdly insistent rain, they play upon my ribcage like a xylophone of bone.

They bring out the ghost, red-faced whiteman. I must not presume, I know not who accuses whom, only that I will do, in my soul, if accusations need to be brought. It is more rage than embarrassment. There is a peace in rage & no embarrassment: a purity. But then pure it has to be. It has to be rage without an object. If you have given something up, that is the object. This. I am the aim.