" Soon we will all have to learn to lipread if we want to understand each other
our ears will become useless to us since all we will hear will be our buzzing..."
preoccupations
by raymond federman
a friend of mine is writing a book about Auschwitz -- I told him he should be angry about Auschwitz --
he says that I once told him that one should never write in anger
I told him
angry not in the writing
angry being there having been there
angry at the word Auschwitz
the writing happens after having been there
on another matter my friend who is writing
the book on Auschwitz asks why I seem preoccupied
I must have given that impression in my last message
so I told him
you ask why I seem preoccupied these days
I am preoccupied because
the trip to France in March coming up -- always a bit anxious about going there -- a busy trip it will be -- a happy trip too --
occupied and preoccupied with Moinous in Tokyo - it's not going anywhere right now -- it's sort of turning in self-reflexive circles --
undecided if it should be written in French or in English or both at the same time
I tried that before -- drove me to mild insanity
preoccupied with golf
season of the new tournaments
we take advantage of the perfect weather
here in golf paradise
preoccupied with the fucking leak in one of the bathrooms and the fucking plumber had to come twice because he fucked up the first time but still insisted on wanting to be payed to come back and repair his fucking mistake
twice 95 bucks
preoccupied also with the sliding door to the garden the fucking door refuses to slide so we had to bring in a doorman who would make our fucking sliding door slide again so that we can slide out into the garden and enjoy the view
195 bucks
on top of that I am suddenly bombarded by things to read -- things that must be read --
and Starcherone Press in Buffalo is getting ready to publish My Body in Nine Parts [yes the English Version] with enlarged texts and enlarged photos of the nine parts and this requires a number of email exchanges to publishers and photographers and etc etc.
plus doing the dishes
plus helping make the bed because the bed is so big it takes two to make the bed correctly
plus taking out the garbage
plus watching football on tv
plus looking out of the window
plus I forget what else
but I am here
I can prove it -- I just cut my little finger and it bleeds -- nothing serious - but a little reminder that I am still alive -- promising lag -- as Malone put it of his own situation --
I wouldn't put it past me that I will still be here after I come back from France in march and even after I come back from France in July and even after the French translation of The Farm comes out and even after I go back to France again and after that --
no I wouldn't put it past me -- as Malone said while outsmarting his death --
old sam is on my mind these days
I would like to put some order in the Sam Book
make it read more like a single piece of ranting about sam rather than just a clumsy collage
not that I think this book will ever be published and why should it be
it's a book for me
for a few friends
the happy few
or the happy fous
so it goes
and I lost another 12 more hairs this past week
and my head itches and my toes nails need cutting
and the buzzing in my ear is getting so loud it's taking over
I am told that there are 55 million people in America who have buzzing ears
that's why there is so much noise in America and people don't hear anymore what other people are saying
soon we will all have to learn to lipread if we want to understand each other
our ears will become useless to us since all we will hear will be our buzzing
who knows maybe that's an inevitable part of human evolution
evolution towards our decomposition as sam would put it
a time when language will be taken away from us by nature
after all -- as it was said -- I think by Bataille -- or maybe Artaud -- le langage est une erreur de la nature --
yes nature made a mistake the day she gave us humans language
look where it has gotten us
now imagine a world not far ahead of us without human language
I mean language of the mouth
we will still have the language of the body even if we cannot talk to each other
and hear each other
our body will have to learn to become more fluent
but imagine for an moment humans roaming around this devastated planet --
that also inevitable the way things are going -- without ears and without mouths since these parts of human anatomy will have become useless and superfluous -- and therefore reclaimed by nature
well one could pursue this further and imagine all the animals -- all the other living species also having become silent -- and therefore without noses and ears --
for nature has now reclaimed the little noises she gave to the animals --
all that is left now to the survivors of this planet are eyes to see and limbs -- hands or legs -- to feel
to see and feel that is all that will be left to us
without a mouth taste becomes irrelevant and vanishes without the nose smelling also becomes irrelevant and vanishes
and I wouldn't put it past me to believe that nature would also want to reclaim our eyes and our hands and feet
and so one day we would be standing on the edge of the precipice of human history deft and mute
naked of course because unable to function we could no longer earn a human living
hairless from head to toes
toes now reduced to stumps
just as arms and hands have
also been reduced to stumps
nature having long ago reclaimed what had become useless to us
we would stand erect shapeless figures barely mobile bumping into each other clumsily
seen from above we would look like giant fish
but one day fed up with the firm ground of this planet all the survivors having managed to make it to the edge of the ocean -- all of us still left standing would plunge into the water --
and there frolic again freely joyfully aimlessly like in the good old time when nature was but water
unaware of our sordid past
oblivious to what we had been
and to what might be again
our past-future
that's how it goes on this bitch of an earth as Pozzo once put it
or was it Hamm who said that
doesn't matter since even when we rise again from the water to stand on solid earth as humans
and nature makes an error again
and we start babbling our blah blah
even if we manage to make sense
of why we had to come out of the water
to explain the universe
Godot will not come
Godot will never come
He didn't come the first time
He will not come the second time
nor the next time nor the time after that
as far as the unthinkable end as far as the final little pouff
when everything in the universe will go back to what it was before it became...
