Avigail also remembers the curious story of how the letters arrived in reverse order, Tav to Aleph with Bet – the second from first and therefore second from last – meaning Berachah (a blessing) demanding, perhaps vaingloriously, that he might be given the honour of creating the world (or starting the Torah – which was, in effect, the same thing). Elohim cordially agreed, but then the first/last letter, Aleph, stood aside, piqued, and refused to appear before Elohim because Bet has already won the greatest prize of all the letters. Elohim called Aleph forward, and, eventually (rather sullenly), he came. Elohim then told Aleph that he should not worry, because he, Aleph, would stand at the head of all the letters and that all unity would be found in him alone.
The first of the seventy names of God will begin, silently, with Aleph.
Ahhh … Elohim.
He is the Power.
God of Gods.
Aleph makes no sound. Aleph, like Avigail, is the brief inhale before anything might properly be uttered.
Aleph is also the letter of fire. He stands proudly at the head of the word, fire. He is the oxygen that feeds the fire and lets it burn. Although his is a fire that dances and flickers and flames but never harms or destroys.
The primordial fire.
Home.
Bet, strangely, is the letter that represents place, that represents home; it is grounded, of the earth, and the dagesh – or dot – hidden within is the one who lives inside it.
The one who belongs.
Avigail suddenly sees her own turmoil – her own battle – neatly expressed in these two Hebrew letters – Bet and Aleph – savagely competing against each other …
Yet Elohim establishes peace between them, does he not?
Avigail scowls and thinks about everything feeling topsy-turvy from the very outset …
Home.
But then wasn’t the Torah started on the last page and completed on the first? And the letters? Everything back-to-front, inside-out, arse over tit?
Avigail ponders her own strange journey from silence to sound, from sound to silence.
Was it such a strange journey after all?
Perhaps I am not the silence that follows, she muses, the silence imposed, the quietening down, but rather – like Aleph – the letter who stands apart and will not immediately enter (defiant Aleph!) – the deep inhale before …
Perhaps, she thinks, there is room for me after all? A home. Perhaps I only had to stand outside a while and quietly wait for my number to be called?
Avigail remembers the old story of how Elohim actually created twenty-three letters – but the twenty-third letter had somehow gone missing. This extraordinary, elusive, staggeringly lovely consonant, lost.
Where is the lost letter?
Where?
Where?
And what’s its shape?
And what’s its sound?
And when it is found? Ah. All the world’s troubles and mis-fires and imperfections – all strife and disorder – will finally be set to rights in a cacophony of new words and new sentences and new works, not hitherto conceived of.
Yes. Everything falling neatly into place, the very instant this lost letter is uttered.
Perhaps we all have the lost letter written in our hearts, Avigail ponders, and it just needs to be searched for and then somehow articu- … articula … spoken?
Avigail feels her pages turning backwards. She hears the impatient licking of dry forefingers and thumbs, the rustle of expectation.
Something must be said!
Surely?
Something curious and exceptional and thoroughly singular!
Something new.
Born of her own, very particular, experience.
Oh, but …
But what?
And when?
And how?
And to whom exactly?
This is to be her mission, surely? To discover?
To peek around her? To stand and wait? To forge her lips into an apparently unfamiliar shape?
Yes.
And look!
Look!
Finally!
Avigail is illumined.
6.
I RUN WITH SCISSORS
Charles sneezes. It’s very possible that he’s allergic to Ying Yue’s singing. Or possibly to Wang Shu’s shouting. Or – by Avigail’s bubbeh’s calculations – a profound truth has just been uttered or (perhaps, more ominously) a grave omen is being augured.
Charles doesn’t give a damn about any of this because he is still tapping away at his fourth finger:
MUST SELF-PARTNER!
Yes! Yes!
I AM SOVEREIGN.
I AM SOVEREIGN.
I AM SOVEREIGN.
Say anything enough times and it becomes true.
Doesn’t it?
When you self-partner, it’s kind of like marrying yourself. As he taps, Charles imagines a wedding band encircling his ring finger ( just as Richard Grannon suggested he might).
Must be here – for myself.
Because if I can’t be here – for myself – why on earth should anyone else bother being here – for me?
If I can’t?
If I can’t be here – for myself?
Why should anyone else bother?
Being here?
For me?
An important constituent of Grannon’s Silencing the Inner Critic course involves doing something called ‘Re-patterning the Inner Parent’.
Charles has not watched this particular module the whole way through – or even partially – but he has cast a jittery eye over the module’s full transcript to steel himself against the possibility that Richard Grannon might say something in the video that offends his – Charles’s – delicate sensibilities about, uh, not sure what, exactly, but, um, he’s hyper, hyper sensitive and he loathes surprises …
And he is already steeling himself for disappointment. He is patiently awaiting disillusionment. He’s almost … it would be wrong to say that he is anticipating it – looking forward to it, hoping for it – but, yes, he is definitely steeling himself for it.
Is this self-sabotage?
Surely not?
There is only room for one moronic idealist in Charles’s life.
And that one moronic idealist is Charles himself.
Charles can always depend upon his dreadfully fucked-up idealistic self to make dreadfully fucked-up idealistic decisions.
Richard Grannon is bound to let him down.
Just like everybody else does/will/always has.
It’s pretty much inevitable.
It’s a foregone conclusion.
So … yes, very broadly speaking (from what Charles can deduce), this ‘re-patterning’ involves conceptualising two perfect parents and then employing a series of simple, psychological ruses to gradually retrain the mind into being less critical and more nurturing. So the Bad Parent (the Inner Critic – the Toxic Super-Ego) slowly becomes a Good Parent (or Parent-s).
Charles will be required to imagine a perfect parent (two perfect parents) and to list (in his notebook) what he thinks their ideal characteristics might be.
Um …
Charles thinks it’s important for a perfect parent to be:
Consistent.
Respectful.
Honest.
Present.
Generous.
Kind.
Loving.
Tender.
Unflinching.
Responsive.
Authentic.
Forgiving.
Creative.
Accepting.
Non-judgemental.
Sympathetic.
Brave.
Patient.
Supportive (did he already say that?).
Warm.
Open.
Fun.
Like Barack and Michelle Obama.
Michelle and Barack are Charles’s perfect parents.
The two-year-old Charles sits happily on Michelle Obama’s warm lap as
she gently plaits his hair (although anyone who plaits knows that this process is never gentle) into fastidiously neat lines of corn-rows.
Hmm. That’s a slightly odd and unsettling fantasy.
For a 40 y/o man.
Barack …
Ah, Barack.
Barack takes Charles to the Oval Office and lets Charles sit on the President’s chair. And answer the President’s phone.
Yes.
And he pats Charles supportively on the shoulder.
And he says things like: ‘You don’t need to buy that second-hand juicer because you are already good enough, Son.’
Barack thinks that Charles is perfect just as he is.
Barack and Michelle wouldn’t change so much as a single hair on Charles’s head.
Charles thinks Ying Yue’s singing voice is utterly bizarre. Haunting.
Like windscreen wipers being operated at full pelt when there hasn’t been any rain and the windscreen is still bone dry.
Squeaky.
Very odd.
Ying Yue gazes up at the ceiling when she sings (so she can remember the words).
Isn’t that what angels do? When they sing? Charles thinks. Don’t angels look upwards – heavenwards – angelically – while they sing – just like she does?
Ooh. Alien thought.
Stop it.
Fucking angels.
Next it’ll be fucking unicorns.
Fuck off.
Fuck off.
Fucking angels.
Wang Shu is talking on the phone in Chinese.
Avigail is frowning and staring off into the middle distance.
(Probably silently plotting what – or who – she can arbitrarily re-gender next, Charles muses.)
How am I feeling? Charles wonders.
Panicked.
Confused.
Breathless.
Slightly constipated.
Is constipation an emotion, though? Strictly speaking?
‘Slightly constipated’ could be a metaphor, Charles supposes, a metaphor for something like … uh … general unease. For a blocked-ness. A resistance. To THE NEW.
Yeah.
Must embrace THE NEW.
Must stop being such a grouchy, closed-down, pent-up old duffer.
Glass half empty.
Perpetually defensive.
Suspicious.
Did you know that the most valuable human quality/virtue (of all human qualities/virtues) is …
FLEXIBILITY?
!
Not bravery.
Not loyalty.
Not kindness.
Not generosity.
No.
Flexibility.
Did you know that?
Jesus was incredibly flexible. Always innovating Jewish traditions.
Buddha promoted the middle way.
Sri Ramakrishna was like a kid in a sweetshop.
Eckhart Tolle giggles a lot.
I am receptive.
I am flexible.
I am open to change.
After bellowing at Ying Yue to stop her dreadful singing, Wang Shu has once again retreated into the familiar space – the gap – between the refrigerator and the kitchen door so that she might give her full attention to the VERY IMPORTANT conversation she is having (in Chinese) on her mobile phone.
Ying Yue is gazing intently at Charles as if awaiting a cue.
Ying Yue is awaiting a cue from Charles. Ying Yue likes this tall, ancient man with his many locks on the front door and the sometimes bits of holes in his underpants and his great facility to open and close bins and his pointless affection for dreadful tilework. What will Charles do next? Ying Yue wonders. She is in complete awe of his spontaneity. Charles appears infinitely surprising to her.
So tall!
Ying Yue is impressed by everyone. But at this precise moment in time she is impressed by Charles.
Charles?
Charl-sss?
Cha-ruls?
What Char-uls do now?
Huh?
Why Char-uls tapping-tapping-tapping his finger so much?
Arthritis?
How interesting!
Splitter-splatter old fat stains on the ceiling.
Pinched toe in shoe.
Hmm.
Could save cheese if cut off mouldy bit, maybe?
Ying Yue peers around her, myopically (Ying Yue is not short-sighted, but she affects short-sightedness because objects in the world are often very surprising to her – door! hand! kitchen blind! – and she needs to protect herself from the shock of it all). Ying Yue is looking for a sharp knife. Ying Yue sees a blunt butter-style knife on the draining board. She grabs it. She then opens the lid of the bin (manually) and reaches deep inside. She feels around for a while. She finally locates the pat of cheese (which – due to its weight – has fallen to the bottom of the bin). Ying Yue carries the cheese (a medium-strength Tesco own-brand Cheddar) to the counter and pushes a couple of objects out of the way (a new copy of JapanEasy by Tim Anderson, a new pair of black, silicone, mini-mitt-style oven gloves). Ying Yue opens the packet, removes the small block of cheese and carefully chops the mouldy segment off, then tosses it into the bin, returns the non-mouldy remainder back to its bag, seals it, picks it up, delightedly, and presents it to Char-uls.
Char-uls takes the proffered cheese. Ying Yue beams and bows.
Charles is unsure of what to do next.
What is the appropriate form of behaviour/response when a visitor to your home throws away something from your fridge and then retrieves it again from the bin and returns it to you, proudly (sans mould)?
‘I like cheese,’ Charles says, limply.
Charles might as well have said, ‘Whistle hairpin kangaroo.’
It’s just noise. It’s just some idiotic syllables tumbling out of his mouth after a brief flirtation with his brain, his voice box and his tongue.
‘Me too!!’ Ying Yue applauds Char-uls. The man is a genius!
Ying Yue is bewitched by Char-uls. Right this very minute. While her eyes are fixed upon him. Bewitched!
In thirty seconds’ time Ying Yue will be bewitched by a cracked floor tile which from a certain angle looks like a mountain being struck by a bolt of lightning.
Although – to be perfectly honest – Ying Yue doesn’t actually like cheese that much. But she is willing to like cheese if Char-uls likes cheese. Charles doesn’t actually like cheese all that much, either. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say. And Ying Yue is so delighted by Charles’s profession of ‘like’ for cheese that Charles is almost willing to believe that he does like cheese.
The creature in the house who authentically likes cheese is Morpheus who in actual fact loves cheese and this is why Charles buys cheese and uses it to create a malleable and edible yeasty shell around the assorted tablets (Tenormin, Inderal, Dilacor XR) used in the treatment of his Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. What Charles doesn’t know is that Morpheus suffers from Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy simply because he wants cheese so badly. Charles’s mother, Branimira, always fed Morpheus cheese. For Morpheus, cheese represents Branimira’s love.
Branimira was Morpheus’s perfect parent.
And now she is gone.
Charles is uncertain what to do with the cheese. He doesn’t feel he can put it straight back into the refrigerator again, so he pats it, approvingly, then pushes it into his trouser pocket.
‘It’s actually inadvisable to keep cheese in plastic,’ Avigail volunteers. ‘It needs to breathe. If a plastic wrap is too tight the cheese is way more likely to develop bacteria.’
Ying Yue turns to inspect Avigail. Ying Yue is deeply impressed by Avigail’s insights into cheese preservation.
Charles turns to inspect Avigail. Charles is borderline hostile to Avigail’s insights into cheese preservation. No. He isn’t borderline. He is actively hostile.
Fucking know-it-all.
‘Cheese automatically produces ammonia,’ Avigail continues, ‘it’s a nat
ural by-product of cheese and it needs to be released. The plastic interferes with this. For that reason you’re much better off storing cheese in parchment or wax paper.’
‘Parchment?!’ Charles jeers. He is visualising vellum.
I Am Sovereign Page 7