AMORPHIA
flocculates


from the beginning the surroundings had something to do with the unconsolable. the maternity ward of a hospital perpetually being rebuilt. nappy boxes painted bright grey at maternity advice two streets away. the mouldy villa of your grandparents. at the windy railway embankment the suburban accommodation of a relative. later school ("the town scrambled eggs factory") in a district predominantly populated by problem citizens (a harmonious image of racism). then the apprenticeship to a little factory behind the ministry of culture. service at arms. and all ever insistently dismal. a decay that dragged itself out or rather a degenerate circulation. from memory as an altar boy's childhood dream of the punitive church state in the disintegrate landscape. and yet the conditions (perhaps from habit or due to a doubtful notion of existence) had a certain romanticism twisted maybe yet resembling after the event a riotous underlying mood that turned us into addicts of consuming private catastrophes. this vague feeling of having fallen victim to an excellent rottenness was the old burden we bore a bit of biography wherein the word biography here only indicates transience. at least it was no contrived aberration but rather uniquely what we had to describe ourselves with. we were never one country and we were never we. arrogant and assimilable we had gone through our existence with a strong interest in the manufacture of monologues. among blind adulterers mostly we did not especially catch the eye although we were convinced of our gifts just as one might use a physical defect to denote oneself something special. for example we could jink the thumb of our left hand at its origin so that it stood out at a right angle to the fingers. but who would interpret this as proof of our superiority since it was only the consequence of absent cartilage. altogether we thought to define ourselves through lack. rage or recalcitrance could best be grasped as subterranean fashion symptoms. "this insensible environ shaped by the stubborn hunger for flexibility". 'serious problems' were always a convenient catchphrase. but now it seemed clear enough to us that someone opined we ought to end up if you please as elite horsemeat with diseased livers and constantly fumbling. after all this objective was no different from the average and why should we have another orientation. just knowing about our desparate exceptions did not make us any the wiser. unless something like wisdom were also sufficient unto the average. so we thought. yet in search of clear vision we found at most coloured acetates that slid arbitrarily over the intended tractate. wisdom as gangrene and thus repressed as the isolation that spoke out of that helplessly forced 'we'. a residue of grinding hatred without direction. lamentable and in its lamentability lamentable again. We refused to perceive that there were circumstances we did not measure up to. our nature binding as ever. courteous offers on our part that subsequently rankled since we ought to have known beforehand that doing others a favour basically filled us with horror. in spite of that we feigned assiduity at first as if everything could be brought to a simple conclusion as in a fairy tale for we lived as if and took a liking to ourselves in a state of alien puniness liking ourselves in that liking and so on. we thought we could only come about in significant ages. posing as distanced we exhorted ourselves to a geniality swathed like a mummy that served to protect us. intestinally diseased exotics naked but gesticulating pleasantly and repressed as hooligans. we hardly had a clue what we were talking about and spoke only of hunches. talk was the most important of the lies that nourished us. we came upon little importunate animals that permitted us to enswine them in our barren conversation as if born to it. infinitely hurt by the feeling of not belonging we could only obey our dream partners from a distance. we preferred to all others those that punished us with disrespect. they provided us with the requisite certainty for being able to take ourselves for something special. in spite of that we were disturbed. the disturbances seemed endemic. they submerged us as soon as we gadded about in one of the uncountable public spaces in the belief that everybody would know us and of course think ill of us. we had worked hard at our ineptitudes but never was the desolation or the despair great enough to at least go to ruin to an extent deemed out of the ordinary. still nothing done and we were hardly gifted only having a talent to act as if. "arbitrariness is what's decisive" we thought after exacting absorption in the circumstances. to assume this quality seemed significant. anything could be done but the drive to act was deceptive. we had always been crude stylists. the denunciatory object at the right place at the right time. thus we built our lodging. whoever encountered us there formed an image of us that amounted as intended to our hopes of being found praiseworthy. though barren ourselves we wanted to guide the new breed. a generation of cynics was growing up and we though in the rearguard had our uses as ancestral fathers which filled us with a traumatic pride. our education had borne fruit. with frigid elegance the new terrain was bursting at the seams with cosmopolitan narrow-mindedness. slaves of a compulsion to gather experience in modern thermal jackets. insulated non-irritant lukewarm. scanning the bargain enticements on offer an affective poverty seemed the top seller and our revulsion was a first sign that we had already stepped with delight into this locale that called forth no echo slopping above our heads like a viscous fluid into which one let oneself fall brown or yellowish with a stench that was accordingly penetrating. a calming little place dull for all the business noise peaceably thwarting any drive for caution or consideration. seriously in thrall to that numbness we doubted whether it was worth our while in the midst of this ample soup to talk about that lousy background of ours somehow involving guilt (as the integrity of several connivers led them to put it) or ignorance at least which alone though seemed to us to do justice to the lack. that bit of childhood between want and obligation had collapsed in on itself in the form of a gigantic forgery. no new breed and no prisoners. the principal heroes of this debacle were protected by the constitutional state (with a subtle consciousness of traditions) and of course some were disappointed. dogmatically self-idealising opponents of the regime who had been tormented to the point where the conspiratorial naiveté came tumbling out of their exophthalmic glances. swollen with morals in their need for a conscience hysterically tearful they scrabbled for the criminals lost from sight (this was after all a community). but in vain. only such were to hand who selfishly and doubtless without means of defence had shown barely any interest in the construction of antagonists and leaders the slogan 'black or white comrade' that only unmasked itself as the expression of a will to play glutted on power. and so the resistance with its stertorous cries for vengeance had to make do with them and they had to take responsibility for every victim as if they'd been state-certified butchers. nothing but the bestial correction of a barbaric unevenness of terrain. how to describe the past if not perversely. a totalitarian chaos whose tormenting lack of transparency kept the order it compelled transparent in the name of a cause that could no longer be named in spite of its tragic enticements. dream cadaver. at feeding times our anxiety grew into the barren landscape of unification torn from pillar to post between tedium and guilt cramps that nourished our rage to remember. 'working through' that phrase so nauseatingly appropriate to its use whose sound constantly put us in mind of blocked toilets or qualified zombies ('somehow perverse the way that bloke is rummaging around in his wife'). working the past out in shit-spattered mud baths. bestial battle. thus this vanity of impoverished powers of discrimination came to light. a lousy mendacious pastime bearing the stamp of repression. a forest by berlin. right in the middle of a war game the totally drunk comrade's slip of the tongue: 'i'm secretly himmler' a sentence we could put into our own mouths and into anyone else's for that matter. an exact characterisation of the evil no matter when or under what circumstances. after all we too had given affront to various parties had permitted ourselves to be recouped in the hope of a place in the sun though we loved bad weather. we were if anything naïve and our youth was hardly a protection against smart-aleckry. from the beginning we enjoyed no trust and so we insisted on property even if it was trash a vile idyll. somehow we liked our garbage and wanted to keep hold of it. we were more nauseated by a splendid lingering sickness than by the sour cream under our foreskins. open self-hate repelled us. after all we could hardly stand ourselves. conceitedness had long since led people to rise up against their masters so that no one was left with anything worth saying even if the didactical was not in short supply. drivel of senescent anti-authorities usually who attempted to explain away the whole mess with their aestheticising bitterness and relieved us of all powers of judgement since we seemed to lack experience anyway. biterness was not a growth but rather a stamp resembling a birthmark almost a jewel that transfigured the way we saw things enough to make us overestimate nothing. we were different just like the others. 'damn it all and surrounded by characters who do our heads in or at least ridicule us' we thought. the slightest revelation of a perhaps equally minimal cause for embarrassment (even if not remotely resembling a suspicion) made the blood shoot up into our faces. Our glances Screened our heads bright red we were always dragging a lousy conscience around with us though no good reason for that came to mind. at the merest glance of one whose appearance seemed to us to entitle him to pass sentence we felt guilty. With the current trend in clothing and expression almost anyone was a judge. 'if it comes to that we will probably confess to actions we haven't even committed' we thought 'just for the relief' for there was no greater feeling of deliverance than confessing even when not guilty. we usually noted traits of doubt in reaction to such utterances on the blurred face of the person on duty facing us. we must have perpetrated some bullshit or other for our condition (as we read) did not come out of the blue. or was it just the anguished notion of simply being present. 'the clichéd tragedy of a late birth' as we were to think which accordingly marked us out giving rise to a weirdly elitist consciousness. distanced (as we've said) we were glad to admit at least this much in front of the diverse tribunals. at the next table a drinker was droning on and the custom this evening could hardly be distinguished from the custom at other times. we were taking pains to try and eat something. hunger was in evidence but we were somehow shit-scared of the ensemble of munchies on offer. 'drinking is easier' we thought almost with melancholy. one glance at the street taught us that having problems was no bad thing. A subject of conversation was needed when the flow of speech was persistently going totally mainstream. the alienating cramp of the everyday the perpetually raging stomach ache was thoroughly past its use-by date as a theme. the torment of mealtimes for example. if after ordering something from the surfeit on offer we were sitting in a restaurant waiting for what we'd ordered to arrive our deepest wish would be to have consumed the meal already with the bill to look forward to instead of the dish to come. once the meal was served we wanted it quickly behind us and so we ate so rapidly that after a few bites we already felt replete to the point of intense nausea. our overintellectual stomach revolted against its calling. That did not so much stink sweetly as spew with avidity into the flambé. we interrupted the meal and went to the loo where we locked ourselves in and tormented ourself for half an eternity to avoid for as long as possible the moment of having to return to our place with its started dish. probably surfeited with ills (the image of appetising swamps). After just about surviving the horror we needed hour-long walks to at least half-way recover during which process we concentrated on avoiding thinking about food or anything associated with it. compulsive abstinence hardly for we were no treat when we fasted either. an expression then of the most stinking intestinal confusion tormenting the metabolism with its influence like a comrade trained in sabotage. dreams of lifelike stir-fries and carnal pleasures dripping with sweat. death by asphyxiation. most of the day's proceedings were accompanied by variously coloured diarrhoea. But not our daily bread was punctuated by disturbances at certain times of day. Also a revulsion we posited as healthy spread its arse above all when we mutually and with a pestilential politeness designated traits hair-raisingly shared so that in particularly cute cases we could no longer even feel our own presence. thus we cleaved pretty much to the law of circumcision according to which one should keep a tight rein so as to vegetate just thus through denial since anything else seemed even more blockheaded. this hermetic drivel of a few attractive youthful perfectionists. 'why open one's mouth if not to deliver oneself of it' we roared out later although we already intuited that continuation was at issue since they wanted to toil at a perpetual coquetry and snatched away the past that was our touchstone. so they caught us where we hardly showed to best advantage in our merciful consideration for the slaughter. idle brouhaha about a formality purporting to save and unclear. coming to life perpetually delayed. 'we are punished by our appearance' we thought 'for they perceive us and say how things stand with us' and it was clear that we would not fail to hear them. nonetheless we indulged the degenerate freedom that had been accorded us if not freely then at least cheaply. nothing we had achieved obsessed by pathos. i.e. completely without context. the indifference that had always proved sound. We like anyone else could summon up portentous statements accept duels let off steam and conduct some paltry campaign against those who in our opinion had turned us envious. The joy of decisiveness and a meaningless consonance replaced virtue. no repentance did justice to a life made to measure. all that remained in this act was to grant our own mistakes the necessary reverence. airtight flatulence as the only crutch with which we tamed our outbursts limping half-asleep. 'the kind of misery that arises when you don't get shot of your acne' we thought clawing at a bedside rug. snivelling traitors with an embarrassing homeland on their backs. We also inclined professionally to the shallowest melancholy. in the parlour at night we played the nomad driven by suspicion of his own bodily functions. word was 'addiction boycotts digestion' and blissed out on beer we went downhill towards progress. socially speaking the region wasn't badly populated. uniformed specimens on both sides of the railway track. bores wrapped up in certain absences because they were neither guilty nor consumed by disappointment. feeble characters without a birthmark they were about as appetising as spoiled copy. our fellow man was nothing but a monster who paralysed us to the point where occasion arose for seductions to do justice to our varieties. thus we attempted with conversations we virtually disguised as catholic to compliment people into revealing their paroxystically concealed weaknesses and gorged ourselves on a helpless frankness we provoked with cynical tenderness thus making them look even more idiotic. often it was white-skinned ladies delicate of limb who with gentle sexism confided their relationships to the sound of a piano one storey down below. beings who usually lugged rings of fat and silicon-filled hollows around with them in places one had not imagined. but there were also guys of a nuanced pomposity who seemed the personification of backwardness smelling evilly cleansed of course and with an opinion all their own. men real men whom we caught reading a contact magazine always with a certain dampness about the mouth. deformations of consumer consciousness. half-educated left fascists and cultural cripples informed by faith in the right. no other more sensitive material was available for the tortures that so pleased us. so we made the most of what was to hand. the advantage was that we stood in no danger of succumbing to seriousness. a delightful game with the abysses that yawned in others. or we listened to who whom right now and pursued the descriptions of diverse copulations with sardonic envy. 'love's happiness this scarcity damp and cold' we thought in order to mask the typical lament with a blasphemy. aware that we only suffered from unnatural outbreaks of sweat in such situations this mild yearning would nonetheless not let us go. now and then we noted a beauty whom we only dared inspect when she was not looking our way. emaciated bloodless and accordingly of a pallor that bordered on purity we were not after all impressive. Thus at best (from a distance that is) did the filthy goings-on seem bearable and only our liver was aggrieved. we were perched at the bar glancing sideways at a couple all edges and mutual absorption and thinking 'this unyhgienic behaviour in public ought to be prohibited punished by solitary confinement'. 'breeding and convention' we still knew what they meant and were prepared to demonstrate these cornerstones of the order of things with a good fuck. 'the lap of the family' we thought. heroic teams of mothers exclusively nourished on grooved pills. totally crummy toddlers whose very dreams were jammed by the media and who had a certain feel for folk musicians. married boozers spliffing up and squatting beside their wives shamming dead at night in fear of the future which united them with the other members of the trauma. barricaded in equality that was just like us. our partnerships were dodgy constructions of self-pity and betrayal. first we goaded ourselves to wound and then fell sick. thus the asphyxia drenched in sweat after the existence of a beloved stranger had been confessed rendering our presence superfluous. we tumbled downstream arse over tit and were not even prepared to risk a scream. Understanding fully and lacking spunk enough to avoid a war we whimpered asseverations of harmony with a christian gesture. if there was a betrayal then it was so where we amputated our life à deux for whatever was valid for two was wrong. a stinking consciousness. but sufficiently inert we insisted on our cynical honesty. the redemptive outburst was thwarted in favour of a virtual smorgasbord of tragedy. not a blow of the fist not even a prohibition regarding the competitor's existence. only envy at the divine egoism of others. somehow we felt dispossessed. a little nastily clad mountain nourishing itself on doubts. 'perhaps we'll kill them' we thought with a benevolent smile. our method was forgiveness. In church we had learned how to foist a caustic feeling of guilt onto a partner and we still wanted before throwing up to provide these two souls with a scruple so that they felt responsibile for our persistent shivers. Our vengeance was childish as that nearly a commandment. without moorings and with a horrible premonition that we could deal with what was coming we vomited night after night thinking about the details that made our companionship unbearable. as ever the wasteland was again not deadly enough and after all we had made of our addiction to private catastrophes a yardstick for all events. something like satisfaction still existed. Chunks of it came crashing down from clear skies just at the moment when we were indulging our perfection. sensibly indeed increasingly so the filthiness gnawed at our intestines. why were they so obsessed by making decisions. why did we not want to bear this reality cracking our armour-plating so that we too might subject ourselves to the usual emotional confusion. and why in any case did exactly the same have to happen to us as to the repressed extras of this town who valorised their lousy compulsive wargames as the origin of all entertainment. It just took pains on our part to prevent them and so virtually spluttering while dealing with them we somersaulted at an increasing pace. 'hardly relevant' we assured ourselves living as we did essentially on coincidences. mucous membranes in revolt. yammering was probably easier for us than replying with our fists to a treachery that howled with scorn. Troubling to bring about the most improbably harmonious constellations we were under the pressure of a pigeon-chested hope 'it might sort itself out'. we strongly needed to explain ourselves or at least to hurl something audible against the farewell. the hypostatised madonna of the altar boy gave our separations a certain utility however. every woman was enduring qua image and in spite of damages due to absence ready for use as well as for the battles we carried on sneakily in swinish solitude with the offspring of our brains. Barely known churchgoers with penetrating paternal gazes officials of some kind had infected us with various dooms in sacristies and privy council buildings. confessionals appeals to the flag and confessionals once again. we still remembered exactly the dizzying sublime feeling after the first successful mass as a reaction to the pained procession of youth into the lamp factory house of culture on the day of liberation. (i may not be worthy of entering under your roof but say anything and i'll call you a murderer.) mass went deeper. it had already consumed the procession before its doubtful arrival. when we gave the cramp the once over we saw this altar-boy image of a woman assaulting us or radiant not that we saw it clearly but who cares it was a habit and pathetically exhausted we tried to put the love freighted with significance through therapy for as it seemed that the abandoned ones must have a strangely alluring aura for they got those exquisite alms appropriate really only to swindlers and we were advised to exploit the advantage as long as the world out of its own degeneracy still granted fly-by nights like us lodgings. yet the aforesaid was was already clichéd before we suspected it was questionable. utterances on the subject were restricted to the imputation from various quarters that we were either at a morbid stage of puberty or already undertaking our redemption. sometimes the word was 'cowardice' which however arose from a vain lack of nous that tended to paralyse the exchange of blows thus provoked since we usually fell down before then. It goes without saying that we did not elicit compassion although this was certainly among our plans. fed up with the sardonic injuries we got a grip on ourselves took root in the torment of healing of stepping into this landscape shuttled with cares. what happened to us was always provisional and although we were consumed with desire for something final it was indeed clear to us that we were not insisting on this terrain so as to take it easy in a community. clutching at porcine longings there was only ever one person at most worth confiding in. yet when insight took hold and we believed we only existed in her presence she turned away with the observation: 'over. the trivial mishaps were simply the worst and she had probably been bored. harried by laziness we thought we loved her. consuming clarity regarding our one bastion just as it's subsiding. a back-lit lady of pain. the deeper she drowned the nearer she thought us out of fear of moving ravenous for her company. at times she enraged us but what didn't knock us over was not enough for us either. That they called biography. our progress was determined by the degenerate residues of the area with which our existence began. they loomed up out of the sandy plain and at dusk they looked like familiar figures exposing their ruin by consent having at least one thing in common. Sites of leisure furnished with bunkers at teatime. enduring castle grounds in that twilight with classical winter branches and cherubs with head colds as in the days when we were compelled to our first steps on the cinder track at some river opposite the power station. the presence of a denatured residence had apparently and continually driven us into a beyond horny for success. a stylishly restricting fug against which we could pull ourselves together when everything around us began to crumble into yesterday. morbid beings youthful perhaps but forever vaguely wired into their origins. considerate for brief episodes garrulous and inhabited by brilliant confusion. the conviction-stuffed strip of land that consumed one yesterday. a vain harmonious crater and a shit-encrusted battery under the dramatically amorphous sky. no greater clarity was forthcoming and unambiguity was hardly our forte. that much at least we had in common with politics. posthumous fame (and nothing else was at stake) was only available non-specifically so we committed ourselves to vagueness for we were born to greatness or at least to proliferate beyond measure alone in spite of betrayal which as is known is binding and credulous enough to interpret our continual nausea as a perpetual beginning ('what a sentence'). distorted almost beyond recognition we protected ourselves against the arrogant statement made in a righteous undertone that this expressed alienation since the report that crept into our ken orbited (as it seemed) perpetually around this expression in order to undermine it. we wanted to be finished with it although we hoped that something would follow. what lay to hand was supposed if not to exonerate us then at least to relieve us for the further circumstances since of course only consisted of our personal difficulties. a recklessly native looseness that now in its demoralised form rather took on the aspect of a complacency welcome as fatigue stuffed into us since we could lay into it with our good behaviour. 'you've got to have some target to shoot at' we thought. the handicap of saying nothing new but only being able to compulsively keep the aging opinion sayable unmasked itself as an opportunity of remaining present. other paths were replete with a labile filth and so unthinkable. after a few circuits of our pestilent flat we came to the conclusion that we were old enough to develop certain principles for example not to wash in the evening but to utter a short prayer in compensation before falling asleep and to have to reside increasingly in the realm of non-communication since comprehension was taking the upper hand. we had circuited once and had now rearrived at our starting point. Great excitement had accompanied the expectation of our arrival but that was over since we were basically in the process of switching to the role of opinionated refugee. our modest lodgings were filled to the brim with pathos and thus in a state permitting us to say 'good night'. it was about time. the bed seemed to be waiting (a supposition of course). a sheet of paper lying nearby turned in the wind caused by shaking out the bed. there the profane admission. WHY THE NOISE. WE TOO HAVE SINNED. thus the catholicism of our crippled childhood days brought us home from the margins to the recognition that we had to serve sardonic constructs in order to exist at least halfway according to our kind.