October 27
I’ll make an effort to avoid interesting topics today so I can get better at forming the letters, which I’ve almost completely forgotten about doing. What can I write that won’t be so interesting that it distracts me from my purpose and at the same time won’t be so mind-numbingly dull that I wander off, yawning expansively, and leave the work half-done?
(Juan Ignacio has come to interrupt me. There’s no shortage of interruptions in this house, as I think I may have mentioned before. He’s asking for his mother. I tell him she’s not here.) (But I’m not going to write about interruptions, despite the fact that at this very moment someone is ringing the doorbell.) (Juan Ignacio comes in and asks about his mother again, not for himself this time but on behalf of the man who rang the bell, as if my answer were going to be any different. “She’s not here.”) (But as I was saying, I’m not going to discuss interruptions now. They affect me directly and are the main cause of my sorry psychological state, which makes them an interesting topic, and I resolved at the beginning of today’s work to avoid interesting topics. Although uninteresting topics also conspire against my handwriting—but for a different reason, of course.)
October 28
On I go, trying to write about uninteresting things, perhaps heralding a new era of boredom as a literary movement. Today I started out with very big writing, which after just two lines has already reduced considerably in size. Why was that? Because I began thinking about how to finish my sentence, wanting to be sure it made sense. Conclusion: I’m incapable of paying attention—what little attention I have—to more than one thing at a time. Here, the priority is the handwriting and not the prose, which means that making no sense is perfectly acceptable. So stop worrying and start forming those letters, boy: nose to the grindstone. It’s not easy to get used to the idea of not making sense. Although, really, sense is nothing but a complicated social construct. I suspect that last sentence is entirely untrue, but I can’t let myself start philosophizing now, about that or anything else. I have to concentrate on my handwriting; that’s the point of all this. I have to let my inner self change and grow under the magical influence of graphology. Big writing, big me. Small writing, small me. Beautiful writing, beautiful me.
November 2
It’s been a few days since I last did these graphological exercises, but there are good reasons for that: whether because of circumstances or because the exercises are working, lately I’ve been feeling motivated to do other things. The most important of these things, at least in my eyes, is the half-dreaming, half-waking, and almost subterranean task of trying to revive my imaginative abilities and therefore my writing. In practice, this has simply meant making the final revisions to a short story I wrote some years ago, putting it in an envelope, and sending it off to see if anyone wants to publish it. I’ve also been busy in the field of international relations, catching up with some correspondents abroad, and this involved the far-from-easy (in Colonia) task of getting ahold of some good-quality photocopies. What would have been wrapped up within a couple of hours in a civilized place, here required three days.
My handwriting’s terrible today, more of an agitated scrawl. It’s intelligible, however, and many of the features I’ve been trying to improve are now there without my having to think about them. Some need more work, though. That’s why I have to keep writing slowly about uninteresting things: so that through patient repetition my writing develops the characteristics I think it needs in order to be completely legible again, and so that, in parallel, my behavior develops the characteristics this new, hypothetically acceptable handwriting would reveal in a graphological examination. And then I could declare myself “the artist of my own destiny.” This may be a rather grandiose ambition, but sometimes it’s no bad thing to aim high, especially in a field where everything colludes to make you aim low, and where mediocrity is what really impresses people.
November 13
You’ll have seen (and I said “You” because I need to practice my capital Y’s) how effective I’m finding these exercises as a way of settling the mind and readying it for the day ahead. Because of this, it’s a serious error to begin the day with any other kind of work (those infernal crosswords, for instance) and leave these wholesome exercises for a future moment, which sometimes never comes, or comes too late.
There was a time, not so long ago, when my daily handwriting exercises seemed on the verge of becoming literary exercises instead. I was very tempted to turn my calligraphical prose into narrative prose, with the idea of building a series of texts that, like the steps of a staircase, would carry me back up to those longed-for heights I was once able to reach. But the Devil invariably sticks his hoof in. He’s always crouching out of sight somewhere, peering into the heart of Man, and he chose that moment to dangle a (temporary) job in front of me that would help me save up some money—something I needed to do to stay on top of things, clear my debts, and be left with a reassuring sum in my pocket. So I took the job, and that was the end of my resolve to write, and even, for a few days, of these exercises. Coming back to them now, I once again feel the urge to write something. To write and be published. I need to see my name in print—my real name, the one I use when I write, and not the one I was given. And more, much more, than that, I want to get in touch with myself, with the miraculous being that lives inside me and is able, among so many other extraordinary things, to fabricate interesting stories and cartoons. That’s the point. That’s what it’s all about. Reconnecting with the inner being, the being which is part, in some secret way, of the divine spark that roams tirelessly through the Universe, giving it life, keeping it going, and lending reality to what would otherwise be an empty shell.
November 15
I’m going to try using these exercises to settle my mind, readying it for the day ahead (which is shaping up to be a tough one, though you can never tell with these things: yesterday, for example, everything was shaping up swimmingly until the neighbors informed me that Ignacio was on his way home from school because he’d been feeling ill. That destroyed my peace and quiet for the rest of the day and for today as well, days that had been marked out for the most absolute and glorious solitude, since there was a school trip scheduled. And so Ignacio—who, by the way, is feeling perfectly fine—is at home, in bed out of laziness and his own free will, calling me into his room every so often just to exert his control over me and make me feel his power, and because his mother is in Caracas I have to obey, fussing over him guiltily the way invalids always make you).
November 20
Let’s see if I can pull myself together enough today to form the letters properly. I woke up this morning feeling distinctly ill at ease with myself. As far as I can tell, this is because for too long now—too many years—I’ve been living outside myself, concerned only with what’s going on around me. And on the rare occasions when I’ve been able to turn my gaze inward, I’ve connected not with the most substantial parts of myself but with the most trivial, “subconscious” ones. What’s happened to my soul? Where has it gone? For ages, as I said to Alicia awhile ago, I’ve been in a bad way because I have no connection to eternity. I meant that I’m seeing things superficially, that my experiences are shallow, that I’m a long way from my Inner Self; too far, and with no idea of the possible routes back. It doesn’t matter what happens to you if you’ve been separated from Yourself; everything’s equally weightless and goes by without leaving a trace.
The problem isn’t the demands of the outside world, even though I often think it is, but rather my attachment, or commitment, to those demands.
I need to give this more thought.
November 21
Since my handwriting has received justifiable criticism of late, today I’m doing my best to produce a script that’s elegant, svelte, large, and easy to read. There’s something really nefarious about the weather here in Colonia, and it sends the nervous system into disarray. Today I got up early and went out to run some errands before noo
n, and (speaking of “svelte” handwriting) my body felt monstrous and muddled, as if I’d turned into a kind of toad with a disgusting swollen belly, dragging myself laboriously along on weak, stubby legs. Walking three or four blocks through the town in this cloying, stormy weather is a herculean task. Despair clings to your skin like the sticky heat. All you can think about is finding a dark, cool place where you can lie down and let life pass you by. As Juan Ignacio says, “It’s a struggle.”
But I’m no longer trying my best when it comes to my handwriting. Instead, I’m getting carried away by the subject matter and forgetting about forming the letters. I can’t concentrate on both things at once. That’s better; now I’m thinking only about the letters. Which means I won’t attempt to do anything other than form them properly. No letting in other thoughts that have nothing to do with the business of forming letters. It’s boring. I can’t think of anything to write, like a person who can’t think of anything to say when someone thrusts a microphone in their face and demands a comment. It seems that the function of writing or talking depends entirely on meaning, on thought, and you can’t think consciously about thinking itself. Similarly, you can’t write for the sake of writing, or think for the sake of thinking, without meaning being involved.
November 22
Yesterday I noticed that the days when I have messy handwriting are also the days when I smoke considerably more cigarettes than usual. Conclusion: bad handwriting is caused by anxiety. Now I just have to work out what causes the anxiety, but that will be much easier to do thanks to a dream I had the other day. The dream, or part of the dream, involved a vague narrative relating to a war and various soldiers or policemen I had to hide from. But the main story line was about some bicycles my parents were thinking of selling, which belonged to me.
(Several interruptions—in real life, not in the dream. The psychologist turned up unexpectedly to see a patient in the consulting room she shares with Alicia; the dog followed her in, as did her son—the psychologist’s son, I mean—who she’d brought along for Ignacio to entertain. Ignacio tried to escape, but it was too late, and now he’s entertaining him. Then the architect arrived, which meant the dog came in again, after all my efforts to get him back outside. The architect had some new plans and quotes with her for the house we’ve just bought. Things are getting more complicated by the day.)
They were my bicycles, and I was upset that my parents were selling them.
November 23
No stone is left unturned in this house when it comes to my entertainment or amusement (whether I like it or not). For example, today Alicia thought she’d soak one of Juan Ignacio’s overalls in a bucket of soapy water. She left the bucket in the kitchen, under the window, between some chairs and the electric stove. A few hours later, when I was in the kitchen having a cup of coffee and trying to read a chapter of my detective novel, Ignacio came over for a chat (he does that a lot these days, generally to discuss matters relating somehow or other to sex). He sat sideways on one of the chairs in his casual, nonchalant way, resting one foot on the rim of the bucket. He has a tendency to fidget restlessly when he’s speaking, and with one of his movements his foot slipped off the rim of the bucket and into the water, knocking the whole thing over. I still can’t understand how, if Ignacio then stood up and his leg was more or less vertical, or diagonal at any rate, the bucket could have ended up completely overturned with Juan Ignacio’s leg still inside it. He couldn’t extract his leg any more than he could set the bucket upright, and so he simply watched, transfixed, as the bucket’s entire contents emptied spectacularly onto the floor. The whole kitchen was flooding, and I hastily retreated to a strategic location with my book, my reading glasses, and my cup of coffee; in other words, I went into my study. When Alicia came back, and after her fury and despair had subsided, another scene played out that was even more comical than the last. As Alicia set to work drying the floor, Ignacio and I leaned comfortably in the kitchen doorway, watching her exertions with great interest. It didn’t occur to us that we were doing anything wrong until Alicia shot us a murderous glance, and then the whole scene suddenly struck me as hilarious. After moving prudently out of her reach, I began roaring with laughter.
November 25
I’m fully aware that these exercises are becoming less calligraphical and more literary as time goes on; there’s a discourse—a style, a form, more than an idea—that won’t leave me alone, and it’s getting the better of me. The blank page is like a big chocolate pudding; I’m not allowed to eat it because I’m on a diet, but I can’t resist. And although technically nothing and no one is stopping me from writing whatever I want, however I want, and although I have reams of blank paper I could use for one sort of writing and the other, there’s a strange factor at play, which it would be too easy to label the “time factor” (it’s more of an “anxiety factor,” and even if anxiety and time have always been closely related, they’re different things). There is, I was saying, a strange factor in all this that’s pushing me to superimpose one kind of writing onto the other, which means I don’t succeed at either because the result is stuck somewhere between the two. But this strange factor that I’m calling anxiety: where does it come from? The first explanation that occurs to me, which I therefore suspect of being superficial, is that I feel the handwriting exercises are “allowed” in a way the narrative ones aren’t. So the discourse emerges, struggling against its own suppression, and the result of this face-off between writer and superego is as frustrating as any other transaction you can’t control, like an erotic dream that ends in veiled, symbolic images, gaps in the story line, and infinite delay.
There you have it: for years I’ve been delaying the free narrative act indefinitely, with one excuse or another. And it’s not that I find it hard to let go of the idea of writing; most of the time I’m not even conscious of wanting to write, but then I feel driven to as soon as I pick up my pen and face the blank page.
Part Two: The Empty Discourse
The Discourse
November 25, 1990
There’s a flow, a rhythm, a seemingly empty form; the discourse could end up addressing any topic, image, or idea. This indifference makes me suspicious. I suspect there are all kinds of things—too many—lurking behind the apparent emptiness. I’ve never found emptiness particularly frightening; sometimes it’s even been a place of refuge. What I find frightening is not being able to escape this rhythm, this form that flows onward without revealing its contents. That’s why I’ve decided to write this, beginning with the form, with the flow itself, and introducing the problem of emptiness as its subject matter. I hope that this way I’ll gradually discover the real subject matter, which for now is disguised as emptiness.
I don’t want to force things with images from the past or explanations of the present, which always sound false. I’d rather let the form itself speak, so it reveals its contents bit by bit of its own accord. However, I can’t reveal that I’m waiting for it to give something away, because that would send it slipping straight back into apparent emptiness again. I need to be alert but with my eyes half-closed, as if I were thinking about something else entirely and had no interest in the discourse taking shape. It’s like climbing into a fish tank and waiting for the waters to settle and the fish to forget they had ever been disturbed, so they move closer, their curiosity drawing them toward me and toward the surface of the tank. Then I’ll be able to see them—and perhaps even catch one.
What I can’t do is imagine a reader other than myself—I’d be afraid of boring anyone else with page after page of nothing, of subjecting them to my dissimulated waiting game, my somewhat interpretative approach to revealing the form. Perhaps a reader who isn’t me would already have found something of the true content of the discourse in these lines. The thought of this alarms me even more than the thought of being boring. How humiliating to give myself away to the reader before I’ve given anything away to myself, blissfully unaware that anything’s been given away at all!
And by now something almost certainly has. For a start, this image that’s arisen of a hypothetical reader who’s more perceptive than I am strikes me as very paranoid. The discourse is revealing its paranoid side. Well, I suppose that’s something. But I worry that this discovery, which tells me nothing about the contents of the discourse, has sent the fish in the tank shooting off in all directions.
Let’s wait a bit. Think of a distraction. Since it’s difficult not to talk about anything, the best approach would be to distract the discourse by filling it up with trivial things, things that have nothing to do with the matter at hand and don’t so much as allude to my distraction-related tactics. I need to turn my gaze away from the discourse and onto some insignificant alternative topic. It’s up to me to choose one. I could, for example, talk about the weather (which would have the advantage of getting rid of the hypothetical other reader, the one who’s more perceptive than me, once and for all).
But I’ve just been interrupted by the phone. I answered it because I’m at home alone and thought it might be for me, but, as usual, it was for Alicia. These interruptions in my activities are all too common. Until now, I’ve almost always lived alone and interruption-free. These days I live with a woman, a child, a dog, and a cat (and a maid, who comes every morning from Monday to Saturday; now it’s a Sunday afternoon). The dog and the cat spend their time in the back garden and are fairly easygoing; any problems between them tend to arise at mealtimes. The dog has a far longer history in the house than the cat. The cat is a recent addition, mysterious, white-furred, and very guarded with his emotions, though very rash, or perhaps oblivious, when it comes to other kinds of danger. Ever since the arrival of the cat, the dog has been seized by jealousy.
Empty Words Page 3