Another Mobius of Names

I’m well into my twenty-first year of silence. I opened my mouth yesterday, to try to speak again, but nothing happened. There was no sound. Just breath. Breath and breath and breath and breath and breath and breath and breath. Will it ever stop? I don’t know. Probably not. That’s all it is: the respiratory cycle. I need oxygen to function, so I open my mouth and inhale. Sometimes words come out on the exhale, but I don’t speak. Every day just withers by in silence, and I’m sitting there, mouth open, completely mute. Take a drag of a cigarette and breathe out the smoke. Eat too much food and throw it up.

I keep walking down the street, looking at people as they pass me by, waiting for a sound to come out of them, but they’re silent too, and I wonder if it’s just going to keep going on, it has to keep going on, we keep listening and hoping and opening our mouths thinking someone will speak, but no one does, no one ever will, possibly no one has. Things just keep dragging like that draw from the cigarette that you couldn’t let go and don’t you know what that does to your lungs but of course you know what that does to your lungs because people won’t fucking stop telling you but they never actually speak so you just sit there wondering why you’re listening and you can’t stand it any more. And you drag and drag and drag and drag until nothing’s left and of course you have to be silent because the only thing anyone would pay attention to that came out of your mouth was a fucking carcinogen and now you’re hooked up to a machine that keeps your processes going. Now I’ve gotten wordy. Things always end up getting wordy.

Talk and jabber and blabber and blather and no one listens but sometimes you wonder if anyone should. The rain’s falling again. It’s broken up into particles when it’s in the air. Doesn’t make any sense. Shattered remnants of rainclouds drizzle outside and tap on the window, descending in droplets and nonsensical pieces, but when they hit the earth they puddle and congeal. Ground becomes wet, dirt becomes mud—we all get new names in the rain. That’s why I carry an umbrella. Something romantic about standing outside in a thunderstorm, so long as you don’t get wet. God forbid you get your clothes wet. Is there anything worse? Jesus, I doubt it.

Clothes. I almost wasn’t silent. I almost spoke, or at least I thought I did, when I had my nice hat on. I put on my nice hat and said to myself “today I’m going to speak,” and I opened my mouth and I sang, but no one could hear it. Maybe no one wanted to hear it, or maybe they heard it, but it wasn’t good enough for them to listen. Regardless, I sang. That was close. So close. Maybe I just tried to sing. Maybe it was just fucking shitty, but I did it.

I wonder what it’s like, speaking, but I don’t know because I’ve never done it. No one really knows because no one’s ever really done it. I went to the Laundromat yesterday. I kept putting quarters into the machine until I had put in eight quarters. Eight fucking quarters, can you believe that? And then I had to load my clothes. I always load my clothes and then they spin and spin and spin and spin and spin and spin and spin and spin and they never stop spinning because if they stopped spinning they wouldn’t be clean, and if they weren’t clean I’d have to wash them again, and that’s eight more quarters in the machine and press cycle and warm wash and please insert detergent. I keep coming here and it’s always my clothes. Sometimes I have new clothes, but other times I just wash the same clothes I washed the time before and before. I barely even remember before, but I have the clothes to prove there was one. They’re the clothes we wore before the new clothes, which are the clothes we wear before our next set of new clothes. We have to keep them clean, because if we don’t and they have stains on them then they won’t be what they were. And then in the midst of the cycle he starts speaking about himself or at least pretends to, but really he needs someone to talk for him:

It’s dark where I live, and no one ever speaks to me. They talk about me and with me, but they never actually talk to me. Sometimes I wonder if they know I’m here or if they just take me for granted and then I’m just sitting in the washing machine and spinning and spinning and spinning but I don’t always call it spinning but then again I don’t call things anything but what they make me call them.

Enough out of you. I had a teacher once. His name was James, but he was better than me. Then I met Samuel and learned a little from him, but he was better than me, too, and neither of them really spoke. No one can ever really speak; just form different combinations. They came close, though, especially Samuel. They sang and they sang on key. I don’t think I ever sang on key. They sang about beautiful things like washing machines and clothes and cigarette drags and respiratory cycles and things I try to sing about but can’t because that song has already been sung and the tune has changed since they sang about it. The tune always changes. It was E Minor then, but it’s G Major now. How’s that for weird? The notes haven’t changed a bit, really, but somehow the tune is different. They keep giving me the tune and the notes, even though I don’t know who “they” are. Where the fuck are you? Why are you hiding from me?! But they never listen to me or answer me, because no one can answer me because no one speaks and there is no “they.”

I’m still silent and I think I’ll always be silent and humming in G Major unless the tune changes again. It’ll probably be A Dorian if it does. Yeah, A Dorian and the notes still won’t change but the tune will be different again and I’ll wonder if the tune will ever change or if that F sharp will still be there forever and ever amen, but that’s the Lord’s prayer and those are His words and I can’t take them and blaspheme because if you blaspheme then you’ll go to hell but goats go to hell and sheep go to heaven and I’m tired of being a sheep and bleating instead of speaking but goats bleat, too. It’s the same basic religion, and either way you’re fucked.

Heaven or hell? What’s the difference, at least it’s an end to the octave with one sharp and maybe it’s a new mode but it’s still the octave and eight quarters for the wash and then the machine is rumbling again but you’re not listening to it because you’re writing another overlong sentence and you’re reading it aloud to yourself because you wonder if you’re speaking yet but you’re not speaking because no one ever speaks because we don’t give ourselves that option and instead we can only bleat and sing because we don’t know the words but we know the tune and even when we do know the words we didn’t pick them because nobody can pick the words and then you’re lying on the bathroom floor and blood is leaking out your eyes and mouth and you’re wondering where all the time went and what the weather will be like where you end up bleating and Saussure is being a little bitch again and he’s the one who convinced me that you could call Heaven and Hell “Heaven and Hell” in the first place and of course he was wrong but you still have to call them “Heaven and Hell” because that’s what everyone else does. I think I’ll close my bleeding eyes and get some rest. I’m tired from not speaking.

It’s hard to express yourself when you can’t speak. I am he who wonders what speech is. I am the voiceless scramble to understand what voice entails. It all dissipates into nothingness, but it’s all we have. These arbitrary clangs of alarms and trolley bells sound off from our mouths out of desperate necessity. We have to shout; we have to warn others of our presence. Here we are, here we are! We’re here, we’re right here, don’t you see us?! Nobody sees us because nobody hears us. Nobody hears us because we can’t speak. We can only sing at different volumes.

When I was a kid my mother asked me why I didn’t speak the way I should—about the things I should. I shook my head. That wasn’t speaking. She didn’t understand, but neither did I. Neither do I. How can you understand something no one can teach you and you can’t observe yourself? Some people look to God. That’s where I looked. Sometimes I still look, but the Tower of Babel has crumbled. I remember learning about it in church and thinking “well, that’s nice. That’s easy enough.” But nothing is nice, and it’s not easy.

Wordy again. Silent again.

The more you try to say, the less sense you make, but it’s impossible to make sense when you don’t know how to speak. All you know how to do is throw up and blow out that cigarette smoke and breathe and breathe and breathe out the stale air of your environment. I’ve been breathing for too long. I’m tired of breathing while I’m bleeding out of my eyes and mouth and ranting about nothing but not nothing since it’s impossible to define nothing because you can’t define differance and Derrida tried to do it and came closer than Saussure, who’s being a little bitch again, but it’s still completely without end and how can you have infinite freeplay in a finite system and how can you justify the lack of a center in a finite system and how can you define the system as finite when it’s clearly amorphous and it grows and stretches and squelches and oozes where it sees fit? You can’t. You can’t just invert the structuralist system and call it a day; you have to recognize that the so-called “finite” system is expanding and changing outward as well as inward.

I want to wrap tentacles of words around each of your billions of nerve endings and command you to feel. But how can you command without knowing how to speak? Maybe I can make you feel, but feel what? And why? We can’t describe it because we don’t know the words, and we can’t make the words because we don’t know how. I guess that’s the finite system. We can only change as far as our boundaries allow. How can you conduct a symphony while you’re still writing it?

I guess you can’t. When I was kid my mother. When I was. When I was a kid. When I. When. Once upon a time. It was a dark and stormy night. The alarm clock rang. When I was a kid. WhenIwasakid. Wh enI w asak id. I’m still a kid. I’ll always be a kid, even when I’m a corpse I’ll still be a kid. I’m always what I was but never what I will be until it’s what I am. Was it all meaningless? Was it all arbitrary? Maybe. Maybe when I was a kid. But not now. No, it c an ‘tb eno wth atI’v ego ne t oscho ol. Spinning spinning spinning spinning and no matter how hard you try you can’t b re akth ec ycl e.

Canghe the insedis all you wnat, but if you sltil hvae idaneticl outsieds niothng has cgnaehd. I tried to change the outside from within but I don’t think I did it. My teachers tried, too, and they came closer than me, but they didn’t do it either. Is there any way to have the rain meet the ground in a way that makes the ground the rain and the rain the ground? I’ll be silent until there is.