1
I’m so happy, he shouts, as he puts a bullet through his head. it leaves
a clean hole on either side of the skull, no blood pouring out. I’m so
happy, he shouts at his triumph. He knew it would happen this way,
pulling the trigger. He knew it, he had imagined it and he collapses
of a spasm of joy.
His friends look closely at the clean hole on either side and decide to
take their own thoughts seriously too and act. it will not be with a
pistol but with each other whom they have had on their minds for so
long without daring to speak openly about it. They speak and become
transfixed in each other’s image. They are not exactly dead, they are
unmoving but fulfilled. They are not even aware of being happy or
depressed and the way domestic animals roam among them nibbling
at their fingers, ears, toes and nose is how these animals eat at flowers
and grass. To the transfixed it is a happy identification. They can believe
the world is whole, all this without saying a word, their eyes starry.
2
Their eyes starry, their bodies glistening with sweat that acts like a
lacquer to seal their pores, they grow rigid, gleam like polished stone.
They can recall the one who put a bullet through his head. He has
risen and walks among-. them tapping on each body for a response to
his happiness, each tap like his heartbeat to inform each rigid body
exhibiting its own happiness. These are mutually dependent acts but
tapping his way from body to body, his imagination proven to him, he
is not aware of their happiness while the one person who is aware of
this dilemma has not yet shot himself in the head or talked to another
human about each other. He could be lonely were it not for the sight
of these who are so happy in themselves. They promise much and he
has a relative hope for the future.
3
He has a relative hope for the future. He lights a cigar and observes the
community of polished stones and the one pierced skull and wishes to make
himself totally familiar with their lives. He examines the clean hole in the
head. He treats himself to a glass of wine. He has doubts, he finds it hard
to discover their sources. By examining himself in the mirror he can see
his mood. By turning his face from the mirror he can see the bath. By
turning from the bath he can see the towel rack. By turning from the towel
rack he can see the toilet bowl. By turning from the toilet bowl he has made
a complete circle and is back staring into the mirror. It’s somebody about
whom he has doubts, he has discovered in one complete revolution. By
marching out of the bathroom he will leave the image behind him in the mirror
and by leaving it behind he is free. Who is he now? He has doubts.
4
He has doubts. He chews upon the stump of his cigar. He can express
himself but to what end? Language is not the solution. He can join the
rigid aggregate community but in what posture? He could make love
to himself but with what thoughts? He could warm himself by the
fire in winter, cool himself in the sea in summer. He could eat when
hungry. He could cry when in pain, he could laugh when amused, he
could think when in trouble. He is an ordinary man.
5
He is an ordinary man, he wants his breakfast, he needs his unhappiness,
he wishes to be himself, he desires apotheosis as he is and so he shoots
himself to relieve himself of his doubts. Brought to consciousness by this
act, he dies. The man with the clean hole through his skull does not know
the ordinary man is dead and the aggregate community never cares to change
from its transfixed postures while he, lying dead, is studying that compelling
emptiness in him beneath his breastbone and does not know how either to
fill it or extract it to give him peace. He yearns to leap up from the floor to
become a whirling dancer, an ecstatic, for the hell of it.
6
For the hell of it he tries but lies still. He then knows he is dead and
would inform the world. His body will, he decides. It is the evidence
and his silence the message, and now what does life have to offer? It is
time to think. He thinks, the earth has the answer that it presses upon
him where he lies. Not to think is the answer. He can be a stone or a
cycle of existence, inside the cycle the air of emptiness, a small hole
for a small life such as he had seen in the skull of the risen one. He
can be a stone with a hole in it and he will always be the same. He has
his comfort, he is ready to die successfully, he dies and is complete, an
ordinary man.
Leave a Reply