There seems to be nothing indeed to do. I blurry-recall the time in which I perched myself upon a stool in the laboratory, enough to remain avert and alert; the swapping of the crystallised colours through a device which lets me see better. My eyes used to be the instruments through which I devise high rationality: but now, the lens is foggy, I suppose. I can only suppose. I cannot produce high rationality.
There seems to be nothing indeed to occur. I have not a clue where John is situated. A clue, which I do not have. The clue I cannot see through foggy lens. I cannot feel (feel!) his presence: he must have left the room – but why stop there? Why not leave the entire flat? Perhaps he has left the entire flat, and left me here, vulnerable, attacked by my internal, able to be attacked from the external as my internal lies dying, and so will my external, I am afraid, now that my internal cannot protect it from external attackers! How could he leave me like this? Splayed, unmoving, susceptible, and if an external attacker would arrive, externally indifferent to my fate? The only movement there would be would be blood dripping onto the couch, the carpet, the craft of my existence collapsed and dust.
What to do? What to be? What to occur? But, indeed, I wonder how all this migrated to a point that I even realised that another person was out of the room, or in the room, or even meant to be in the room. Meant to be in the room? Since when does this man have a place here – apart from a place to live; but finances do not come into it; oh no; they do not. He has no place here. Not near me. I should be able to ignore him effortlessly, in a typical state, and go about my business, my work. Oh, but no! Now I have regressed (regressed? Oh, no – regressed!?) to a point at which I feel (feel?)... vulnerable? Indeed not! I cannot. I cannot. Indeed.
And when John returns, in eventuality, I shall lie and lie, in my stationary state, my motionless measure, but I will indeed not lie when he leans down and breathes to me, as if I were a corpse, as if there were people (people!) impatient and disturbed in a line behind him, inching towards the open coffin, and he breathes to me his secret, or his reassurance, or his condolences, or all three, and he whispers, "How are you feeling?"
But I do not lie when I whisper, on the contrary to his own efforts, nothing. However compromised by the cliché of emotion that may sound, I presume that it is as severed from emotion as can be. There was a time (although my conceptualisation of time, at this time, is subpar at exceptional) during which I could perch myself upon a stool in a laboratory, avert and alert, and peer through crystal lens to crystallised colours, and derive wonders from clear rationality. The colours themselves were not marvellous, but the rationality, oh, the rationality (the rationality!) through which I could see clear and crystal, my eye upon crystal and bracingly clear. That was the peak of excluding emotional attachment from my existence – indeed, it did not exist – not to me – and therefore it did not. And now, even when all is collapsed and dust, the omission of emotional attachment is still there. It has not so much endured: more so, the comprehensive lack of emotion was destroyed during the collapse, and the scream of its splintering architecture was lost amid the silence of the entire breakdown (breakdown?). What is left, out of unknowing nature rather than rigid formation, is a heavy, drained lack of emotional attachment: indeed, merely being severed from it, in an unbuilt act and a piece of good luck that I haven't the emotion to treasure.
But here I am, lying upon this leather couch with my fingers strayed from the cracks, akin to the laboratory ceiling, and I no longer have the lens beneath the laboratory ceiling, I no longer am the person beneath the laboratory ceiling, and no longer feel the man beneath the laboratory ceiling: that man: that man: that man. He has left this room, and left this flat, perhaps, for how long? What is my conceptualisation of time? He could have disappeared for days. Or perhaps an hour. Is an hour not a common measure of time here? Perhaps he is gone an hour. That sounds neutral. I require a constant. I used to be able to control them, very carefully, meticulously, while peering through the microscope, those crystal lens. Oh, meticulous. Meticulous! How I yearn to be meticulous again, in that empty, detached yearn derived from the severed good luck I cannot cherish. But I used to be able to control, oh, control, to control the shifting movement of my mind, to chase the shifting movement of the fog, to reach inside and take something, that meticulous something that I may control, that tiny fraction which I can see clearly through the microscope lens –
Was it a small thing, then, that set all this off? That splintered architecture and engineered collapse and dust? Is it a crack in the lens, a microscopic crack, that caused the entire object to blur? I would be able to locate the crack, if I could. I could identify it. Perhaps I could even set about to remedy it. If I had the knowledge – the knowledge, if I could see it, identify it, deduce it. But I would need a microscope to see such a microscopic crack. But I simply stated then: there is a crack in the lens. It is broken, blurred; filled with fog. I would be able to see it if my rationality, my mind, my lens, still stood intact: but if they were, there would be nothing to see. Indeed, I cannot. I cannot see. Either I see the darkness of my eyelids, or the greyness of the fog.