Monthly Archives: July 2010

Christ on the cross, Buddha beneath the tree, says X. Wasn’t that where they learned to fail, so that we too could learn to fail, weren’t the cross and the forest their places of learning? How rare it must be to fail, to really fail, he says. Kafka’s tribunal in Berlin before Felice, Beckett in his mother’s room. Master Eckhart’s trial. That’s an education. There should be diplomas in such education. And me? he says. Me talking to you, tapping on my keyboard in my room, pausing to sip wine? What kind of education does that amount to? What are you teaching me? Fuck all, he says, that’s what. Tap some more, you say, it’s got you this far. Tap tap tap, sip sip sip. That’s my education in failure, here in my place of learning, which needs hoovering, he says.

I’m a failure, says X, it’s true, you can’t deny that. But not enough of a failure, you’re right about that. Not a total failure. A middling failure at best. I can’t understand the extent of my failure. If only I could really understand it for once, just for a moment truly understand my failure. I try but I fail to fail, I’m a failed failure, I can’t even fail right. If only I could become a total failure, he says. That’s my ambition, to fail utterly, to become a total failure! If only more people would realise they’re failures and learn to fail properly, he says, fail and smile at their failure, then the world might be a better place. But that’s rare, it must be very rare. Is it even possible? I spend all day failing, or trying to fail, and I can’t do it, I’m a failed failure, a frowning, greedy failure, so there’s nothing for it but to start over tomorrow. What will it take? he asks. What will it take to make people learn to fail, to see the urgency of failing?

It’s lost he wants to be, not found, X tells me. But lost in the good way, not the bad way, he says. Not like this, not stuck here talking to me. Given over, that’s what he wants to be, transported, ecstatic. That would be his homecoming, his amazing grace! he says. No more chatting to you, he says, no more you and me. I’d be you, you wouldn’t know what hit you! So how do I get ecstatic? he says. I should probably stop talking to you for one thing. Maybe I should drink some more. Maybe I should get raving drunk, or take some ecstasy. Where can I get ecstasy? But how would you know? Maybe if I raved at you, he says, spoke in tongues with rattlesnakes in my hands, if I went off my head, off my tits, and moved you to speak, to speak to me through my raving, to take my tongue and speak with me, in me, if I fooled you enough to move you, then maybe I’d get lost, but in the good way not the bad way, lost in you not in myself, not sat here tapping on my keyboard sipping wine. But of course you wouldn’t get moved, he says, how could you, I’m not a complete idiot – yes I am. People would look round at me and shake their heads and wonder whether to call someone, the rattlesnakes would bite me and I’d wake up in bandages, embarrassed.