The Sub-Editor - The End

THE END

'Well, I gave it go; to stay home alone. But I just couldn't last the year.

'Last Friday, I travelled to Devon; say goodbye to somebody dear.

'And while I was there, the sun finally shone. The sea was a beautiful hue. The peebles were as I remembered them. The sky: revelationary blue. (The teacake was doughy, the latte luke-warm. The terrace non-smoking; I came to no harm.)

'The sight of the sea affected me. Its sound just filled me with nothing. No voices no memories no idiot-thoughts. The sound of the sea reduced me to nought.

'And, in that void, I realised something: significant and beyond words.'

The Sub-Editor - Junking The Journal

JUNKING THE JOURNAL

She rolled onto her side and turned her head to mine. She kissed me, then whispered in my ear.

'I'm so pleased with myself', she said.

'I've given up authorship and erased my past. Bought a shredder from Tesco; it was shredded so fast. Carthartic and satisfying, if slightly embarrassing. I've saved all the paper I didn't write on. The paper that's left will last a life-time.

'My journals, you see, I try to describe me; but, the minute I don't like me, I buy a new diary. . .

'It's resulted in a lot of wasted paper and time.'

The Sub-Editor - If You Turn You May Lose The World, Orpheus

IF YOU TURN YOU MAY LOSE THE WORLD, ORPHEUS

He said:

'I found her there.

Her cold, still stare.

Dead by a vipers' nest.

'Consumed with grief,

In disbelief I cursed 

The fates.

I grew to hate.

'But I played to the gods.

Enchanted tune.

Seduced and reduced;

sentimental swoon.

'Sentimental, they were; 

no heart-felt there.

My heart was broken

They did not care.

'Sentimental, they wept:

"Let the woman live free".

A caveat, of course:

The onus on me.

'The pressure on me

Not to turn back and see.

Yield to my joy

My anxiety.

'I was given a chance

To recoup what I'd lost;

To retrieve the woman

I'd lost at my cost.

To retrieve the woman

I loved to death

'Should have checked

My excitement.

Held my breath.'

The Sub-Editor - But When Did We Learn Life Wasn't A Beach?

BUT WHEN DID WE LEARN LIFE WASN'T A BEACH?

The Sub-Editor - Another Beach

ANOTHER BEACH

The Sub-Editor - When We Believed That Life Was A Beach

WHEN WE BELIEVED THAT LIFE WAS A BEACH

The Sub-Editor - Pomegranate Seeds And A Blow Torch

POMEGRANATE SEEDS AND A BLOW TORCH

Her sadness didn't last long.

She said: 

'Spring returned, and with it her sanity

The girl who'd mistaken herself for Persephone.

'The girl who'd mistaken herself for Penelope
Managed, at last, to conquer her melancholy.'

I had just returned, once again, from my wanderings. 

As we sat, late at night, at the kitchen table I said: 'something is different. I think you're more stable. You are more like your old self - if I may dare.  Or have you, perhaps, just altered your hair?'

She said:

'It all began with a bang to the head. 

She decided to top-out, but just missed the ledge.

'As she hit the ground, she thought "what the hell?"

She'd failed to live this life very well.

'She'd been sick as a dog and too full of sadness;

At times, it has felt like a terrible madness.

'As she hit the ground she thought "what will it be?

I'm so tired of all this anxiety".

She paused, then said:

'And, the joke is on me.
From the day I was born I abhorred conventionality.'

Apparently, at that point the pomegranate seed that had been lodged in her throat, dislodged itself (and stuck to her coat).

And, my advice:

Use a blow torch to eliminate any seeping.  If you dry the wall you probably won't fall. And, then, you can stop all that weeping.

The Sub-Editor - Paradise Place

PARADISE PLACE

She said:

'You saw me as I walked towards you; you, standing there on the bridge.  I saw you, too, and I envied you. You stood so tall and you had it all. You lived your life to the full.'

She said:

'And me, I have the summer and spring. Autumn and winter are cold. I'm told I, too, should live to the full. But, just give me the underworld.'

The Sub-Editor - Web

WEB

She said:

'Many suitors came and asked for my hand. I carried on weaving by day. At night, in the dark, I unpicked what I'd woven.  Clandestine work that could not be proven.

I said, of course, my hand could be won; as soon as my shroud was finished, was spun.  I would carry on weaving until it was done.  The web of deceit had begun.'

The Sub-Editor - Elsewhere

ELSEWHERE

I didn't leave her the night I left England.

But, when I wasn't with her, I was in another country.

The Sub-Editor - Bong-Tree

BONG-TREE

She said:

'So, we sailed away for a year and a day to the land where the Bong-tree grows. . .'

She said: 

'Yes, we went to sea, just you and me, to a place that no one else knows.'  

She rolled onto her tummy and turned her head towards mine.  She whispered in my ear:

'A magical land inhabited by trees that stood like fat old gentlemen, their wide girths bulging and their fingers gnarled and curled.  And ancient rocks with pebbles and pockets that we climbed up and sat on to eat. And herds of deer that moved like shadows.  And a castle with turrets and fairy-tale towers. And a river that shone in the sun like silver.

'At night, we laid down next to each other, cocooned in our sleeping bags but still together.  

'And we smoked as we stared at the stars.'

She said:

'I was never happier than in that place. I had all that I wanted and needed.' 

The Sub-Editor - Tears

TEARS

I knew we should be together from the moment that we met. It sounds fantastic, stupid, romantic, but I couldn't get the thought - get her - out of my head.

As we lay together with the TV on mute we let the tips of our fingers touch, and our toes as well. No clinging or grasping, no suffocating. Her skin was soft and her stomach flat. Her hair was long and messy. In the night it looked black.

She exuded love, but seemed not to assume or expect to get it back.

She told me a story; 'let me tell you a tale', she said with a smile.  Her camera lay under the pillow.

'There was this small child, a girl, who every time she said want she wanted, something catastrophic happened. Or, perhaps, if she ventured to say how she felt, then someone always felt it more dramatically than her.

'So, she decided never to say what she wanted. She learned to keep her feelings to herself. As she grew older she became even more superstitious and refused to acknowledge, even in her thoughts, her fears and ambivalence. Instead, she became the mistress of bad faith.

'But, then, one day she met someone she wanted. She met him the day he was going away. She wanted to say "don't go, please stay" but the words got stuck in her throat.'

I asked her why she carried a camera. She laughed and said it was so she could remember. She said she used it to describe how she felt; in the moment, before she re-wrote it into something else, something that didn't hurt.

'If I took a picture now' she said,  'it would be seen through tears.'

The Sub-Editor - Ibis

IBIS

The night before I left England, I slept in an Ibis.

I ate in its diner and sat in its bar.

I knew from before it was easy to score; when people go travelling they are looking for more than their home life is prepared to afford them.

The bath-towels were white and soft; the bed-linen cool and white. We shared a bottle of cheap red wine and left the TV on all night.

I didn't expect her to be carrying a camera.

In fact, I didn't expect her at all.

I miss her.

The Sub-Editor - Who's Talking Now?

WHO'S TALKING NOW?

Don't think, for a minute, that because you say it's true anyone else would necessarily agree with you.

Yes, of course, you can produce evidence (for pretty much anything) but, when all's said and done, what does any of it mean?

The Sub-Editor - Day Of Reckoning

DAY OF RECKONING

'The thing to remember is that nothing has changed. Except what I thought was the case. But my case was a myth and a fantasy; a lie combined with bad faith.'

My brother turned to me and asked, 'what do you mean by this?'

'The day of reckoning is, in fact, a re-positioning. A case of seeing the facts. A case of seeing the reality, and adjusting the way that one acts.'

My brother turned to me and suggested, 'perhaps you are pissed?'

'To believe in God is surely a vanity, but I must say I'm sad we've discarded Greek tragedy. The thought of the Underworld is strangely life-affirming. Posthumous reunion strikes me as quite charming. And I have to confess that the thought of love is calming. The thought of not having love is certainly disarming.'

My brother turned to me and said, 'can I offer you an olive or, maybe, a crisp?'

'Yes, it's one thing to hypothesize, it's another to enact. I, for one, can intelletualise, critique, interpret, analyse, but it's altogether different to behave as if you're wise.'

My brother turned on the TV.

'You see, emotions are immune to self-control and censorship. They're disruptive and subversive and, at times, are quite seductive; to be immersed in something abstract but so vicsceral, persuasive. Though I'm somewhat loath to say it, I would say it's quite addictive.'

My brother turned off the TV and shouted, 'so what you gonna do about it?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'You tell me. After all, let's face it, it's your reality.'

The Sub-Editor - Intervention (4) Austerlitz, Then

INTERVENTION (4) AUSTERLITZ, THEN

'You always have been rather remote, of course, I could tell that, but now it's as if you stood on a threshold and you dared not step over it. That evening in Marienbad, said Austerlitz, I could not admit to myself how right everything Marie said was, but today I know why I felt obliged to turn away when anyone came to close to me, I know that I thought this turning away made me safe. . .' (W G Sebald, 2001, Austerlitz, London: Penguin, 304)

Ok, let's play the pause game one more time. I'd stop time here, if I had the chance:

We had walked all day and talked the way we always did.  We had picnicked in the shelter of a dry-stone wall. Yorkshire in autumn: the sky stretched out blue and forgiving above us, and the beech trees were dressed in copper-red.

We walked for miles and, with you, I felt complete. As I always had and did with you. With you, I knew, I was safe.

We dropped down the hill.  We passed the Co-op on the left and the Inn on the Bridge on the right. We reached the station, and laughed about something I can no longer remember.

You said, 'I'll see you soon'. And I said, 'yes, please'.

I wanted to add, 'I love you. I don't like this life without you', but I didn't dare say it; say how I felt. I had learned to be wary.  Even of you. We had learned to be as bad as each other at not daring to ask for help.

You said, 'I'll see you soon', but, you never came back.

I'd stop time before you said, 'I'll see you soon' because, then, there would've been no promise to break. And I wouldn't have wasted so much time anticipating, desperately longing, for your return. 

The Sub-Editor - Pause

PAUSE

So, she's back: our omniscient narrator.

I don't know who she thinks she is, this self-appointed interventionist. But I recognise her.

The last time I saw her she was sitting on a wall, a dry-stone wall in Yorkshire. She had insisted I come for a walk. A stomp and talk, she called it.  Stretch the legs. Blow away the cobwebs. She was full of the latest book she'd just read: Wanderlust. As with all her enthusiasms, she had now turned her attention fully, comprehensively, to walking - as a consequence of her reading - with renewed and exasperating vigour. (Although, to be fair, it wasn't only a fair-weather occupation of hers, this walking, this stomping, the stretching of the legs. She had always walked when she was pre-occupied. When asked, as a child, what she'd like to become she answered with naive sincerity 'a bag-lady'.)

It was a glorious day, the season shifting into autumn: crisp and fresh. She began by telling me how she loved the touch of the breeze on her forearms and face - 'like a gentle embrace', she said.  But, then she began talking of scopic regimes, launched into the fact that photographs aren't ever what they seem. A photograph is one-dimensional and static.  To live is to be fully sensate, fully embodied.  She turned her face to me and said, 'I'm scared that for me, all that's too late'.

I stopped in my tracks, not knowing what I'd heard, except that it was bad. And she turned and looked at me, and laughed.

We ate our sandwiches in the shelter of a wall. A dry-stone wall in Yorkshire. And when we had finished she hoisted herself up and sat on it, letting the breeze caress her face and blow away the cobwebs, as she drank from the water bottle.

As children we used to play this game. We called it the pause game. These were the rules: you had to describe the scenario in which you'd like to die.

In retrospect, I suppose it was a morbid game for children to play.

As she sat on the wall she said, 'let's play the pause game'.  I shook my head as I lit a cigarette, and refused to look her in the eye.

'Come on,' she said, slightly goading. 'Give me that, at least.'

But, I said nothing.

The day didn't end there, but I have no memory of what followed. We would've continued to walk, to stomp and talk. We would have reached town and continued, passed the Co-op and the Inn on the Bridge, on to the station. We would have laughed as we waited for the train, and kissed before I embarked. But I cannot picture any of that.

So, my sweet sister, let's play the pause game now.

I would stop it all there, with you, fully embodied and fully sensate.  Provocative, over-dramatic and irritating, as usual.  Pre-occupied and scared and, as usual, pretending not to care.

Really, I would stop it all there.

The Sub-Editor - Intervention (3) Photographic Fallacy

 INTERVENTION (3) PHOTOGRAPHIC FALLACY

It is impossible to re-connect properly honestly authentically with the past. 

And, photography: it's a fallacy - a theoretical rhetorical insanity - to believe it can act as substitute (or 'fetish') for the real thing, the real person.

The loved lost body.

The fully embodied, sensate body is precisely what the photographic portrait is not.

A photograph of someone who is no longer alive: it provides neither comfort nor solace. It only reminds one that that person is dead. Arrested in time, the subject refuses to change and fails to get old. The subject refuses and fails to recognise understand respond to who you have (had to) become - in order to survive him.

The photograph, like death, has silenced the subject.

If I remember correctly the Swedish playwright, August Strindberg, believed in a kind of photographic telepathy. He believed he could communicate the subject's true identity, as well as communicate with him (or, in this case, her) through photography.

But, for our character, the power of the photograph is fading fast: badly fixed.

He is no longer sure, even, who the images portray.

The Sub-Editor - Wish You Were Here

WISH YOU WERE HERE

The Sub-Editor - Austerlitz

AUSTERLITZ

'It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last, just as when we have accepted an invitation we duly arrive in a certain house at a given time.  And, might it not be, continued Autsterlitz, that we also have appointments to keep with the past, in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us. . . ?' (W G Sebald, 2001, Austerlitz, London: Penguin, 359-60)