On & Of Philip Traylen’s Diary

[The following is our review of Philip Traylen’s new book, Snag.]

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§ Diaries

One can, of course, read a diary and think of nothing except what is written in it, or take it as a chronicle of events and thoughts, but Philip’s diary is plainly not that sort of diary, since both during and after reading it our heroine wanted to think about anything at all except what was written in it. At first, of course, it wasn’t like that; in the beginning was the word — “diary” — a word understood, it would seem, by everyone, a word that sets the tone and genre of the work: right then, author droog, now we’ll understand everything about you, take you apart bone by bonelet, nerve by nervelet, unwind your convolutions, lay you out anatomically, analyse you, and all will become clear at once.

Philip, however, thought otherwise:

— A diary should be about everything except the person writing it.

— But that’s impossible, — our heroine protested. — After all, no one is capable of writing about anything but their own mind. By your logic, then, the same goes for the person too, and a person is everything except the person itself. Almost Chekhovian. How are we then to know the people we talk to?

— People, as a rule, — Chekhov would say (or possibly Nietzsche), — should be asked about anything whatsoever except themselves, for that is where they lie most.

— Give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth, — Oscar Wilde would say.

— Stand aside and stop blocking my sun! — Diogenes would say.

Here we should stop for a second (at our heroine’s request): Diogenes could not have said any such thing, since he maintained that he was a dog. If you’ve decided to doglarp, go all the way — bark, you mutt.

— Woof-woof, aph! — Diogenes would say. (”Now, that’s a bit better!”)

— The horror of a diary, — Philip said, — is that you can’t say, “it’s a lie,” except by producing the truth, which would have to take the form of another diary.

— I’m all muddled, writers droogi, — our heroine said indignantly, — by your logic (I’m not sure the word “logic” is still appropriate here) any thing must be anything whatsoever except itself; in other words, the book’s no book, the author’s no author, the diary’s no diary, which means the review, too, must be no review and be about anything else at all, with nothing in it about the author and above all nothing about the book; otherwise, ultimately, what do we get? We get nothing.

— It turns out that nothing turns out, — Chekhov (or Nietzsche) would add.

— It turns out that’s so, — our heroine would confirm.

— If only things always came to nothing this nicely, everyone would be happy.

— Isn’t a diary inherently a document of despair? — Philip would put in.

— It turns out that’s so as well.

This made the profoundest impression on our heroine:

— It does (excuse me) turn out logical: in a diary you either write about yourself and lie about everything else, or write about everything else and lie about yourself. Telling the truth in a diary turns out to be impossible; all one can do is “keep up appearances,” the way, for instance, doglarpers keep up appearances. Which raises the question: why read anyone’s diary at all, then? Why, moreover, review a diary? Can one really say anything about it along the lines of: “well, your opening’s pretty nice, but the middle sags a bit, so is your life by the way, and you know what, this graphomaniac is indulging in self-gratification and self-admiration…” Well of course he is, what else should he be engaged in? It’s his diary! It would be odd if he engaged in anything else. Nowhere but in a diary, even inadvertently, is one permitted to engage in such things; elsewhere it’s indecent, and ew!

Our heroine was outraged by this state of affairs, maddened, driven to fury, as though she’d been promised one thing and lied to in the end, but lied to so artfully that taking offence wasn’t even possible, since she had been warned in advance.

— Our dear heroine, we are now going to lie to you. Ready?

Our heroine settled herself comfortably, folded her lil’hands on her lil’knees, closed her eyes.

— Ready, dear diary, ready. Lie away!

And then it began…

§ Philips

Once upon a time our heroine stood at the tomb of Philip (the apostle); she ought to have been thinking of God but all she managed to think of was Philip (the other). What would Philip himself be thinking at such a moment, standing at his own tomb? The apostle would be thinking about the peculiarity of his predicament, about Jesus, poppies, the Anatolian summer, this and that; whereas Philip the non-apostle, whatever he thought about, this or that, would always end by thinking his way through to Kafka. A similar ailment had taken to gnawing at our heroine as well.

— It’s as if someone’s peeping at me, — our heroine whispered to her friend.

The people around them in the restaurant were whispering too, sitting as close to one another as the norms of propriety allowed. The norms were observed not only by the people but by the glasses as well, which did their best not to clink too loudly and not to flood the silk tablecloths with their liquid innards.

— A Tartarian woman of heavenly beauty — of course they’re looking, — her friend whispered. He was a so-so whisperer, more of a rasper, for in other less proper times he was fond of shouting and smoking. His name was Philip (the other other).

— Thank you for always reminding me of the obvious. That’s not the kind of peeping I meant.

— Go to the coppers, then.

— What coppers, goodness sake, — she leaned in closer, — the sensation isn’t physical, it’s more like a feeling.

— To a shrink, then.

She leaned back and with her eyebrows gave Philip (the other other) to understand that, were they somewhere less proper, he’d have copped one just now.

— I’m not mental, — she whispered.

— I believe you…

— But?

— But that’s exactly what all the mental say.

Our heroine stepped on Philip’s (the other other’s) foot, delicately, within the bounds of propriety; he, likewise within the bounds of propriety, let out a howl.

— Want me to go and fuck him up, then?

— Hush! — she hissed. — Keep it down… I’m telling you: not-phy-si-cal.

— We could sweep the room for bugs, cameras, all the stuff perverts have dreamt up these days?

— You’d know better…

— Well, check inside the smoke detectors. Behind the mirrors too.

— I am a woman, — our heroine sighed wearily. — I know all that.

— I’ve read that Soviet spies could make out speech from the vibrations of the leaves of a plant on a windowsill. Did you know that, eh?

— No, until you told me that like twenty times.

— Oh, well, it’s terrifying, I can’t stop thinking about it. That’s why.

— And who’s paranoid? Nobody cares what you, a bloke, do alone in your hotel room. Especially spies from a nonexistent country.

— Once I wiped my arse with a page from Das Kapital.

Not surprised, our heroine rolled her eyes and shook her head.

— Ugh…

— What? It was on the bedside table, and there was no toilet paper. What was I supposed to do?

— Thank God it wasn’t a Bible.

— I would thank him if he put it there, but he didn’t, so… — whispered Philip (the other other) and lifted his glass. — To Marx?

— To Marx.

They drank. They drank again. He was into cocktails, she was into mocktails.

Diogenes lived in a barrel on the public square rent-free; Philip (the other) lived rent-free in her head. It is known that when Athenians passed by, Diogenes would bark and masturbate. It is known that when our heroine’s thoughts passed by, Philip (the other)—

— And it’s like that through the whole diary, — our heroine said to her friend, — Philip (the other) thinks about women, about love, about suicide, about faces, about this and that, but always thinks his way through to Kafka, as if my tactical advantage — being a woman with a face and with leanings towards love and suicide — were nothing to him, fancy that, right, as if what I really needed was to have been born Kafka.

— You can always transition into Kafka.

— Many people have tried that, I would even say most have, and to what end? I’m yet to see a single Kafka in real life.

— You can be the first one. In a sense, if everything, upon being thought of, sooner or later converges into Kafka, you have a decent chance. “One morning after an uneasy dream I woke up as Kafka.” Imagine that!

— That’s the thing: whenever he mentions women or a woman, I naturally imagine he means me, but then I remember the Kafka convergence and am like, thank you very much, I don’t want that. I thought I’d understand Philip (the other), and his diary would tell me everything about him, but it only interfered with my understanding. Now I understand less not just about Philip (the other) but about everything else.

— Let me tell you something. To your ear.

Full of suspicion, she leaned in.

— You should open your window when you sleep.

Our heroine ruffled his coiffed hair and stood up.

— What? “Stay hydrated, stay oxygenated,” — he said, spreading his hands, grinning.

— I’m going to go check the ladies’ for bugs, too, — said our heroine, straightening up and picking up her phone. — And the balcony, to “oxygenate”. I might not come back. Assume the worst and avenge my death.

After the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), Diogenes allegedly (so he wrote in his diary, in his own dog language) was taken prisoner by the Macedonians. He was brought before King Philip (the second), who asked:

— Who are you?

Diogenes might have answered:

— I’m a Soviet Spy. I have questions about your vicious actions against Das Kapital.

But he only barked some.

§ Dogs

Reading, like everything else, can be aleatory and epistemic — not the reading itself, of course, but the uncertainty, which stands opposed to hermeneutics’ attempts to disclose the true essence of the text by way of analysis and rereading, often endlessly, “until suddenly it all comes clear.” So then: if “epistemic” shall mean that, with the quantity of additional information you glean at every reading, the uncertainty diminishes, you understand more and more and feel good about yourself, then “aleatory” shall mean that, whatever you do, the uncertainty is going nowhere — bomb the text’s esoteric membranes, nuke them if you like, you’ll still understand fuck all!

For our heroine this meant that there is something in the text that can be apprehended but cannot be subjugated, cannot be predicted; there will always remain in it that which makes the text literature and not merely information the author wanted to get across to her. The ideal text, at that, produces both aleatory and epistemic uncertainty, but everything epistemic in it serves only to sustain the illusion of understanding in the reader, who for some reason (”shocking…”) needs understanding in order to keep reading. Examples of such texts include, for example, schizophilosophy, most poetry, certain types of prose which contain more poetry than contemporary poetry does, and aphorisms, though not all of them (but more on that later).

— Your mum’s epistemic, my mum’s aleatory. What are you going to do about it? — Philip (the other) would say.

The uncertainty of a person, as you will have guessed, can also be aleatory and epistemic. To reduce the quantity of the epistemic uncertainty about Philip (the other), our heroine had to pack up her clobber, lace her plimsolls good and tight, take plenty of food (the diet of a Tartarian literary diva: berries, nuts, coffee, chips with truffle mayo), and set off wandering the world, to meet and interrogate every last human being, and, when the humans ran out, to begin meeting and interrogating every single dog:

— And do you know about “him”? Yes, no? Why not? Please elaborate.

— He’s a philosopher, also a poet, — a dog would say.

— What is known to you about Philip (the other)?..

— Peak schizoposting, — another dog would say. — I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time.

— What? Dog droog, you mental?

— It’s either brilliant or complete nonsense, woof! — another dog would say.

— Dog droog… Kindly step out of the way.

— He’s a genius, aph-aph! — another dog would say.

— I can’t disagree, but… do you understand why, dog droog? Or are you like everyone — “for all the wrong reasons”? With you lot it’s all tee-heeing and ha-ha-ing.

— Consistently brilliant and vaguely unnerving, arrr! — another dog would say.

— Care to elaborate?

— Aph-aph! If one, so to speak, abstracts away from a century of mutual accusations, internal distinctions, and the rest of the academic tinsel, then the difference between analytic and continental philosophy is banal to the point of indecency, vulgar, even, aph-aph! Analytic philosophy is interested in what a sentence means; continental philosophy, in what form of consciousness gives birth to it. With all canine pride I wish to declare that Philip (the other) is quite certainly a continental philosopher, for nobody reads him as a set of theses; he is read as a phenomenon, a phenomenological vibe, so to speak, “as a symptom,” — a learned dog would say.

— A symptom of what? Eh? Care to clarify?

This stray dog only growled in reply, backed away into the shadows and waited for our heroine to leave, so as to follow her afterwards, like all the other dogs.

— I know you smoke in the university corridor!

— Grrrr!

At some point a whole legion of stray dogs was already mooching along behind our heroine, baring their teeth, growling something or other, working themselves into frenzies, entering into canine sparring bouts with one another.

— Aph-aph!

— Arr! Grr-r-r!

— Kaf-kaf-kaf-ka! Grr!

— Aph-aph! Insightful!

— Aph!

It wearied her so much that all she could think about was shooting them one by one. There was even one rabid dog, or perhaps more than one:

— It’s like Cioran, you know, with sorta internet troll tendencies, — the rabid dog would say.

— Crikey, how much more of this! — our heroine would say indignantly. — Saying it doesn’t reduce any epistemic uncertainty. I would even say that the only thing being reduced is my respect for you, respected dog, and from a respected dog you are demoted to simply a dog, perhaps even a chihuahua, because you understand sweet chiwahfuck all¹. Cioran, after all, is a pessimist through and through, while Philip is an optimist about literally everything, even suicide. Though what would you, a dog (no longer respected), know of that? About your mum, incidentally, he is also optimistically disposed, and what is she? Eh? Also a dog.

— Isn’t that obvious? — the dog will say.

— Well, that’s what I’m saying! Ffrr. Go on, clear off!

Our heroine barked (in a rather feline manner, truth be told), stamped her foot, and generally struck such a pose that more than just dogs would have scattered.

A well-known thought experiment: what would you answer Alexander the Great, were he to materialise out of nowhere right in front of you and ask:

— What would you have of me?

Diogenes, by every norm of canine propriety, would have pissed on Alexander’s leg. To such a question, Philip (the other) would—

§ Aphorisms

The crescent is like the sickle of a Soviet spy-assassin — sharp. The enormous marble balcony, the size of an entire square — white. Our heroine’s elbows, from the hardness of the balustrades — suffer, redden, begin to ache. The city — before her, beneath her, somewhere far off — flickers, teems with night life, knits itself into the sea, into the sky. A warm breeze caresses her exposed skin; a familiar feeling, a subtle sensation, trickles inward, tickles her mind, seizes it — goosebumps — and she hears his, Philip’s (the other’s), voice saying:

~ While no one’s looking, close your eyes, run your palm along your waist, slip it in there, into the pocket, with fingers tremmmbling to three m’s, search, search, search for your purse and in it — a slightly scuffed strategic emergency cigarette.

And she doesn’t even smoke! Pah! The cigarette isn’t for her, it’s for a companion fallen into distress, should such a case befall.

She opened her eyes and… below, along the night streets, stray dogs are tearing about. Again. The moment our heroine closes her eyes while no one’s looking, the dogs see her and appear.

— Aph! Aph! Aphorism! — bark the dogs, but nobody believes them.

Perhaps she too is in distress, for you never know when you are in distress until you’re pressed into thinking about it, since unrecognised distress is simply the flow of life.

— Go on, clear off! — our heroine shouts to them from the balcony.

If everything is aphorism, then nothing is. But that isn’t true, is it? If everything is aphorism, then what is God? If God turns everything into aphorism, what shall we do?

If aphorisms define abstract truths, then Traylenisms define everything else as such.

(“Now I should rather like to become an aphoristess myself and write aphorisms, just like Philip (the other). Did you know Chekhov called his wife a dog? Lovingly, of course, and you know, if Chekhov called me a dog, I shouldn’t mind either. But if Diogenes called you a dog, would you mind?”)

If one stops to think, what is the actual purpose of the aphorism? It sounds deep and true, but is it? The answer to that question doesn’t matter: the aphorism is rather a trick to get something or other going in your brain so that you, in tender emotion, in rapture, in fury, start thinking about things, other things, not even the ones the aphorist(ess) enclosed in the aphorism, for inside it everything has already been thought on your behalf.

If you read too many aphorisms in one sitting, you can catch aphorismosis, a venereal disease that first afflicts the genitals and then afflicts the brain as well, one symptom of which is a swelling-bloating-ballooning of the cranium; the principal effect, however, expresses itself in your brain’s ceasing to perceive reality as non-aphorism and expecting aphoristicity of everything under the sun, as though 1) God had turned everything into aphorism, and your task were to find all the aphorisms, that is to say, Everything; or 2) you were God, and your sole task were turning everything into aphorism (”does this mean that Philip (the other) is an essence of divine principles? Think about it later…”). In your head a so-called “inner voice” begins to sound — though everyone understands there’s nothing fucking-wucking inner about it — and to rephrase everything — words, sentences, objects, people, dogs — into aphorisms. Time for a pause.

— I often imagine having dinner with the people I read, but most of them are hard to imagine, because I already know what they look like. For instance, it’s hard to imagine Chekhov, hard to imagine Kafka, hard to imagine Dostoevsky (though with him I wouldn’t have dinner anyway), yet it’s far easier to imagine someone whose appearance I know fuck all about. We’ll go to some Italian/Thai fusion restaurant somewhere on a hill at the edge of some city by some sea, and we’ll talk about voices in one’s head, about astral stalking, about whether (s)he votes in the local municipal elections; we’ll eat, then split the bill, stand a while longer on the enormous marble balcony; (s)he will realise that distress is not to be escaped and there’s nothing to smoke, and there I am, right on cue: here’s a ciggie for you, dear writer philosopher poet, smoke away, out with it, everything about you: your thoughts, what you actually look like, bla bla bla… So it goes.

— So it goes? Is that your ideal evening? — Philip (the other other) would say, sheepish, having had a few.

— I’ve never said it was ideal. It might as well be terrible, the worst even, but what is a literary girl to do under the endless onslaught of great literary men?

— Transition into Kafka, it seems!

— That’s right! You are listening, aren’t you?

— Arr-r-r-r…

— Precisely.

— Ruff! Woof, woof! — Philip (the other other) let out ringingly.

— Quiet, you, it’s not proper, — muttered our heroine, glancing round and copping a few disapproving looks from the proper public.

— Ouaf-ouaf ouaf-faux… — he proposed.

— Your French’s terrible, but the idea is sound.

— Ruff-ruff, arf, r-r-r-r?

— “Imitation is the highest form of flattery.” I’ll call it A Diary of a Tartarian Literary Girl, and perhaps I’ll finally become a graphomaniac. People who write autobiographies, memoirs, and the like are cowards of the first water, for what could be braver than holding the heavy burden of thoughts and facts about oneself and one’s life inside one’s own self? Besides, autofiction is one long lie. So, given all we’ve established, a diary is the ideal solution. I’ll write down everything as it comes: quotations (mine and other people’s), notes on life (other people’s), assorted philosophical reflections (mine and other people’s), this and that (mine, but done all ironical-like, so it looks like someone else’s). Aphorisms I shan’t write — I’ve no capacity for them; every time I try writing in aphorisms, out comes some assortment of gags.

If you cut off an aphorist’s head, he will keep writing aphorisms for another forty-five minutes. He’ll run about the pathologist’s dark basement shouting:

— While we are postponing, life speeds by!

— You don’t say! That’s a turn-up for the books! — our heroine would reply.

— All of humanity’s misfortune stems from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

— And what about doomscrolling on the toilet?

— Being born is a mistake.

— Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

— Aw, cry about it.

And what of the dogs? Every dog is an aphorist and considers itself a wolf. It’s not for nothing that the phenomenon of “wolf quotes” exists on the Russophone internet. Here it’s worth introducing a new verb, “to wolfsay,” to denote philosophical pronouncements regal and timely, natural wisdom-like. Every dog is a wolf, but not every wolf is a dog. The wolf is held to be a strong and noble animal, the culler of the sick and weak, an embodiment of manliness, so many people prefer to associate themselves with the mighty beast and its great powerful paws rather than with, say, dogs of the chiwahfuck sort. And yet this is simply cope, and “to wolfsay,” if it denotes any wisdom at all, denotes the rhetorical kind.

For example:

— So as not to search for the way out, take a good look at the way in, — someone wolfsaid.

— Now, that’s a new sentence!

— Who knows what life’s about won’t pry into another’s soul. Among the dogs I’ll be the wolf, because wolves make dogs pay the toll, — someone wolfsaid.

— Better a lone wolf than a dog, — someone wolfsaid.

Which raises the question: if a philosopher means to become a dog, why not become a wolf straight off, mmm?

§ Extremities

Dear diary,

This isn’t usually spoken of, and I have no one and nowhere to say it to except here, but ever since I was a lil’girl, I have understood that chihuahuas and gymbros are in fact different bodies possessing one consciousness. Not in the sense that they are part of one metaphysical mycorrhizal network (though I shouldn’t be surprised), but in the sense that for every chihuahua there is, somewhere, a gymbro, and for every gymbro there is, somewhere, a chihuahua — they exist in pairs, which also means the number of gymbros and chihuahuas in the world is always equal, that the balance of the grotesque in physical reality may be preserved; and each such pair shares one consciousness between the two of them — not a mind, not a brain (obviously), but one ontological consciousness.

Now let us suppose there exists a certain stratum of reality called “the realm of pure forms,” with a multitude of dimensions. In this stratum there is always a dimension in which the chihuahua↔gymbro pair is not a pair of two different essences but one whole essence, which in our dimension just happened to have two bodies. This will also mean that when one gymbro dies, one chihuahua dies too, and vice versa. As was written in one smart French book, they are different representations of one idea, inverse transformations of a single essential function.

This would also explain the behaviour of both:

(1) Gymbros are unconsciously drawn to their ontological twins and often acquire small nervous dogs of the chihuahua type.

(2) The inexplicable confidence with which chihuahuas attack things ten times their size is explained by this too. Dogs on the whole do not possess “will” in the form in which gymbros possess it. However, given that a chihuahua in essence shares one consciousness with something ten times larger than itself by sheer force of will, it thinks that it, too, is enormous and can therefore attack anything whatsoever.

(3) A stereotype, of course (haven’t checked myself), but male gymbros have small genitals, whereas chihuahuas have large ones. This is a glitch of sorts in how the essential function was inverted. Unfortunately, in the case of male chihuahuas this leads to the opposite result, and their balls turn out bigger than their brains. And everyone knows that when balls > brains, the male urge to attack someone ten times your size only intensifies.

(4) Both groups are so very “striking,” despite (or precisely thanks to) their physical excessiveness.

(5) Chihuahuas often tremble because in some other part of the world their “counterpart” is trembling too, lifting weights. In such cases they shake at an identical frequency. Somewhere in the world a gymbro, trembling, performs his 8–12 reps, and at the other end of the planet a chihuahua vibrates in perfect resonance.

(6) Both chihuahuas and gymbros are advised to consume protein in a quantity equal to their own weight.

In calling himself a dog (more accurately, doglarping), Diogenes understood all this and, being an proto-gymbro, felt that somewhere inside and outside him there already existed a lil’chihuahua. And that is essentially the sort of dog he was. Herein lies the chief conclusion of his philosophy: to preserve the balance we shall, in the end, have to accept the fact that all chihuahua↔gymbro pairs must merge, thereby creating a new race of chihuahua-gymbros.

§ Lil’absurdities

Our heroine was stirred by a question: at the end of the day, as they say — an’ wot?

Being still a lil’girl, she dreamt of a pet.

— Mummy-mummy, daddy-daddy, I want a beastie!

— You can’t — beasties drop like flies, and you’re too young to experience that.

— Well, let them drop!

— A hamster lives three days, and then that’s it, a lil’corpse. You’ll be doing the burying yourself.

— I don’t want a hamster. I never asked for a hamster. What do I want with a hamster?

— Who do you want, then? A doggie?

— I don’t like dogs!

— A budgie?

— The only acceptable parrot for a literary lil’girl is a stochastic parrot!

Now let us suppose we are, together with our heroine, inside such a statement. Why? Without such a question, even an imaginary (latent) one, a complete absence of logic might loom, mirage-like. In analytic terms:

— If A then B, if B then A, — said a logically looped, tautological expression.

— If A then B, if B then A, more or less, — repeated a stochastic lil’parrot.

— If A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals D, and C in fact doesn’t equal B, and what are you going to do about it? — said something incomprehensible.

— Eh?

— Eh? — said the stochastic lil’parrot.

— If A equals B, then let’s make it so that F doesn’t equal D, and see what happens, — said something strange.

— If A then B, then flowers bloom, — said the thing that interests us, and added: — but that doesn’t mean the dawn has no scent.

— If A then B, then flowers gloom.

This is a logic more poetic than analytical. It can be present at the level of the sentence, at the level of the paragraph, at the level of the whole book, and at the level of human consciousness. A thought may begin in one place and finish already in another, and so at every level of the text. Here it is important to note the difference between, say, “a wolf is not a sheep” and “wolves are people who chose freedom” (both wolfsayings). In the first case the thought is dead, for a wolf really isn’t a sheep; even if we don’t know it, it can be empirically confirmed. That is exactly how thoughts die — at the end of the sentence. In the second case the thought is far from dead, for hard on its heels comes the imaginary question “and what are you going to do about it?” or the imaginary assertion “that’s what everyone is afraid of,” which amplifies the effect. Taking into account the fact (which our heroine established long, long ago) that any thought one way or another converges to Kafka, we may denote such an ending of a thought by K. Then any assertion can be written in the form: A, B (K). Logical? Logical.

What does Philip (the other) say about this?

— I end the sentence at the exact point at which, to continue, it would be necessary to think—

Here one is tempted to add: “What are you going to do about it?” For Philip (the other) would certainly have added it — he does it constantly, and nobody ever answers him. One is tempted to clarify: whom is he actually asking? The abstract reader? Our heroine? Himself? The diary? God?

— Maybe?

— Lots of maybes, maybe two plus two is not five but three billion maybe…

Or he’ll ask like this:

— And what then?

You’d think he explains nothing at all, the very opposite, even. Some sort of obscurantism, this! Our heroine, being an erudite literary lil’girl, would note:

— Deleuze wrote in The Logic of Sense: “There is always another breath in my breath, another thought in my thought, another possession in what I possess, a thousand things and a thousand beings implicated in my complications: every true thought is an aggression.”

— So what are you going to do?

— Uncertainty is what makes a text at all interesting, and we are upset when that uncertainty fails to discharge or resolve into anything; to avoid suicide, we seek fake resolutions.

— What are you going to say next?

Even when none of these questions stands at the end of the sentence, it is there all the same: it was written, then erased, but the trace remained. For example:

— Light: a means to water. Water: a means to light, — Philip (the other) said.

Nonsense? But add “what are you going to do about it?” and everything makes sense. Or:

— Love: a hand stroking the antennae of time, — he would say.

Mysterious, lovely, poetic! But add “what are you going to do about it?” and it’s in your head forever. You start doubting your own existence. This, for example:

— At the level of spirit, I am late; at the level of body, I’m early. At the level of spirit divided by body times two, I’m right on time (as are you)—

— And then what?

Our heroine thought he had finally made sense of life until…

— What the fuck is hoeing on… — Philip (the other other) says.

— Going, not hoeing… — our heroine corrects him.

— What the fuck is going on…

— I’d forgotten — you can’t hold your drink at all.

— As if you can…

— I can’t either, but differently: I can’t because I don’t drink, not because I do.

— When I’m drunk… you start talking in puzzles…

Philip (the other other) hung off her shoulder while our heroine somehow-or-other hauled him down the enormously wide marble staircase that ran from the restaurant straight to the foot of the hill, the only place where, in fact, one could call a cab. There were still a great many steps to go, as if this were not a fancy restaurant for friendly gatherings but a monastery.

— Is it really true… that his name’s Philip too?..

— Yes, only the other one.

— This is what you do… dismantling the only remaining sense I spent years gathering and clinging to… But what in return? Either nothing or too much… Do you know what French wolves say?

A couple more steps and her hand would fall off; more than that, he’d trodden all over her trainers, the ex-white ones.

— I don’t. (Even though she did.)

— Me neither… You disagree with my intent to make sense of life… I never know how much you disagree with me…

— Our friendship is built on disagreeing with each other, isn’t it?

— It’s not… What would your other Philip say to that?

— I don’t know. (Even though she did.)

— You know the teachers… spiritual gurus or whatever… who don’t give a fuck about you or, frankly, teaching… muses… Sophiaesque… who don’t give a fuck about musing… or, erm, Tartarian literary girls… who don’t give a fuck about… whatever it is you do… I’m not trying to flirt with you, by the way… saying this only as an androgynous friend… but I have to say this… you know when they say horseshoe theory of whatever… speaking of Sophiaesque figures… we, Philips, understand something…

With an effort, Philip (the other other) hiccuped.

— A cameltoe theory of logos…

Trü sincerity happens (where and when?) in moments and in places of trü absurdity. Sincerity, so the story goes, is what people expect to hear from you at the moment of disclosure. Whereas here is how it really goes: if you are suddenly sincere about something so innermost that it seems absurd, nobody will take it for trü sincerity; they’ll simply nod along — making things up again, she is — without troubling even to check whether you actually think it. In which case there’s no point saying anything about anything at all. Or is there?

There is the absurdism of Camus, where you have a lil’house in the country, on a hill, a farm of sorts; you live there the jolly good peaceful life, raising little Sisyphlings, in size and habits like the dung beetle or scarab, who push their little balls of dung up and down your hillfarm. There is the absurdism of Chekhov but it hurts even to speak of it, let alone think of it, not even to mention “writing.” There is the absurdism of Kharms, when it’s sheer barminess and nothing makes sense, only funny. There is the absurdism of Beckett, when on top of the whole heap it’s also eerie. There is something in between all of these, or all of them at once. And how is one to live? You have inside you some belief in something trü, and it climbs out as it is, in its own form, comprehensible to you alone; you perhaps even write it down somewhere — in a dear diary, say — and you believe: yes, this is exactly how everything works, I’m perfectly certain of it, here it is, my most genuine trü sincerity… and nobody understands you, they don’t believe you, fancy that! And how then, in that case, is one to talk to people at all?

Our heroine remembered this (from some time ago, not sure when):

— Maybe it is. Surely it is.

— Maybe it’s not. Surely it’s not.

— Can’t be.

— It can’t for you, but it can for me or for someone else.

— How can you be sure? Be certain about such an absurd claim?

— If I can believe in that, in, as you say, “such an absurd claim,” if I can put it in, as you say, “such an absurd form,” that means I can believe in anything, even in something that isn’t remotely true. But it doesn’t matter. It means you can, too, believe in something like that; it means everyone can, everyone can believe in absolutely outrageous nonsense. I mean, in a reality without a single canonical anchor of form for the meaningful, everything becomes real, so there’s no point in trying to understand whether someone means it and is being “sincere” or is just being ironic, for from an observer’s perspective both of those collapse into pure reality anyway. And where does it leave us?

The number of steps, it seemed, was only increasing, for the staircase turned out to be no mere staircase but a circular staircase, skirting the entire hill with its enormous marble steps. Sweat poured off our heroine in proportions deodorant never dreamt of. She reckoned she should’ve just let go of her friend and let him roll down the hill like a bloody boulder.

— Take this, — she said, handing him her emergency cigarette.

Nobody had a lighter, though.

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BOOK RELEASE

1. A pun “чихуахуа / нихуахуа” almost entirely lost in translation.