The Ecstatic Silence: 42
He watched tv where subjects froze. He watched attributes fixed to subjects in ways that made concrete movements of Being hook. There were strong impressions of non-copulative meaning. It was at once a phase of the process itself. The spirit of dependence was intoxication. He watched tv as a system. It was almost nothing, a thing composed of real, luminous and coloured species, and of intentional qualities.
The other blind woman, the one not at the table, the one not with the tumor, the one who came in through the far door and left through the far door, came in and was heavier than imagination, conceived on the basis at the other side of a name, the one who implied her own existence, the one who wishes it to be so, the one who immediately feels she is opposed, who will be a contrast in her own right and on her terms only, the one with the large hands that are reflexes, that deny and take, that bring about the heinous pain there and there and there and there and there and there she will do this for an hour , it will be a play of persons in other words one person projecting, it will be a disposition of souls, a mental disposition to demonstrate bodies have aptitudes, and she will walk like she can translate Johnny, like she’ll correlate and make sure they’re always quiet, because her hands cover and push and punch, because her body which came in through the far door and leaves through the far door never wakes the sleeping child, hands fostering a renewal of coreferences below the waistline, never wakes the child as she goes this way then that way, and Johnny is watching the tv, he watches and watches and watches and sometimes his eyes are closed as a bridge is burning, and she is by herself and something innate is on fire inside her blind body, as if there was a notion of representing herself that needed to touch and touch, but it hurt and it couldn’t count beyond one, so there was a motionless tautology in the frantic scrabbling, like a bird at a window its neck breaking in slo mo as she comes and feels like she might not have done, so her cries are her perishable souls and bodies and thoughts, her sense of being who she assembled here and there and all over Johnny and she came in through the far door never waking the child and left through the far door never waking the child too. There was a failure of translation in her detestable self. She was the absolute simplicity. She was there to repeat. Her perfume was played out in a short space of time. She lied to her own certainty. She was the one who divided Johnny. She was the one who is within herself and within himself also like a strong demonstration. She was lilac underneath and in any case not like anything. She was primarily a constituent of her own terms. What Johnny reckoned was that you had to content yourself with noting the extremes at the end of her spectrum. At one end there is the refusal to respond. At the other end there is the affirmation, as if a guarantee of truthfulness would work it all out. But she was the ineffable absence that pressed herself down to deliver her message like in a German sermon. She was a prayer of sufficiency itself with her hands that were closer to anything than themselves. Johnny wouldn’t turn his head when the door at the far side opened. He attached himself to looking at the tv. What attached to his body was a death drive and life drive. So she was a death drive and a life drive with her hands that never identified nor gave warning. Her torso was without precedent. Her body was as heavy as a thought of thought. She rolled her self into him as a strange topography. The play between I and Being was thematised. The low hovering was a fact. Her reservoire of drives was a modern horizon. Her thighs were instaneous. Her legs prefigured a vertical hierarchy reserved for the intellectus of angels. The horizontal, by way of contrast, was the dynamic schema. She rendered faithfully. She squashed Johnny’s instincts with her own omnipotence. She came in through the far door and flowed. She came in through the far door as a reason. She had hands that were medieval. They were as big as the room. They filled every meaning you could take from the scene. Johnny’s face was smaller. Her fists were obscure. Johnny’s nose would sometimes bleed. Johnny’s ribs would sometimes bruise. Johnny’s privates would always bleed. Johnny’s eyes couldn’t emphasise enough. He was always without knowing the intimate things inside. Nor did he know the intimate things from inside. It was a double reception. She left through the far door as if it was over. But she would be coming through the far door the next time so conclusions were difficult to draw. The medium of the whole thing was the hand, the torso, the leg – programmatically inscribed in the thigh. Unsensed intentions resided in singular sensibles. The dangers were in the lack of pictures. Intentions and impositions played around at full throttle. Johnny felt the hand as a natural sign of affection done as a diamond. There was no abrupt unhappiness. What fun and games were conceived were not his. He lay motionless coming into a dark world. He was covered by her expansions. Her face was the soul explaining everything. Her hands imprinted her senses. He kept everything in reserve for as long as possible. She came in through the far door and he held his head steady as a reliable promise. There was a complex futility. There were strange forces. She held him down. She forced distinctions. She put him on the line. She pretended she couldn’t know. She pretended to express him. She pretended to care. She pretended to abstract truths. She pretended to go to the other end. She pretended to reveal. She pretended to burn brightly before judicious tastes. She came in through the far door and left through the far door and Johnny stared at the tv and the child never once woke. Johnny’s privates bled and he had to change his underwear discreetly when he got back. He washed them in cold water so the blood went down the plughole. He listened to owls as he stood, all tried and tested. Johnny’s nose bled. He carried many handkerchiefs.
First of all, he told himself, not everything was garish. Comics, chromotypes, magazine covers, LP illustrations, slick and pulp fiction, pop music, tap dancing, Hollywood movies, gigantic apparitions helped formalize the nights. In the first place this wasn’t a choice between one situation and another because there was no choice. Johnny had the merit of prefabrication. He had his tried and tested techniques after all. He imitated the monsters. He saw himself in this light as a religious keepsake. God might seduce him. He had his genius for twisting. He walked the short walk back home through wild dark nights joyously revolted. The opposite of the blind woman and her hands, torso and thighs was not Michelangelo but sentimentality. Her crimson body. Her golden weight. Her looted substance. Johnny walked home. He stripped in the dark kitchen. Everyone was asleep. He washed his bloodied underwear with cold water and his hands. He was sore as hell. He slept on his back so he wouldn’t get blood on the sheets. He rose early to collect his underwear and dry them before the coal fire before anyone else woke. He went to the house next door to babysit. He watched tv and the child slept. He ate chocolates from a box. He dozed. He watched the modus of themes, the dictum of substance. Near midnight the blind girl would come through the far door. She never woke the child. Her soul was his sentence. She had bigger hands. She had a dispersed weight. She used her pressing torso. She had explicit thighs. She pressed him into the soul of darkness. Johnny had nosebleeds. His privates bled. She was a common mode. She left through the far door without waking the child. Johnny watched tv. He was careful not to get blood anywhere. He took his payment when the neighbours got back. He took cash. He walked the short way back through the wild dark nights joyously revolted. He stripped in the kitchen and washed his bloodied underwear with cold water and his hands. He was sore as hell. He slept on his back so he wouldn’t get blood on the sheets. He rose early as the dawn chorus erupted its coincidences. He lit an early fire. He dried his underwear. Humbolt linked all the operations, grinned Johnny later:
‘It is just as correct to say that the human race only speaks one language as it is to say that everyone possesses her own language.’
