Sleep Broken/ Part 2

Waves rise in the river,
some waves, even as they try to rise,
cannot rise, they break apart. When cargo boats drift past
the jetty, their wake disrupts the rhythm of some waves, making them collapse before they can reach the ghat and roll ashore. Those who have cast their fishing lines
into the water grow weary
after staring too long at the inevitable cascade of certain currents. Walking along the outer boundary of the walled
garden, I hear mischievous boys
running wild inside,
all of them celebrating their triumph of somehow scaling the wall and slipping into the garden by striking the wall’s surface with iron rulers. Escaping school for the garden! No one stops them; neither the garden’s owner nor the gardener is here today. That day,
or another day. I sit
on a bench. Its slats are green, made of iron or some such sturdy material—even a lion’s reckless claws would surely leave this bench unharmed. The elderly park caretakers seek out and settle into animated conversations with boys their own age, or rendered inactive by age before its time or under its weight. Sunlight slides across the green
grass of that park, spreads out and
somehow erases the irrefutable distance between generations. I walk on sandy paths, drawing circles with the tip of my shoe,
on concrete courtyards,
on dusty, recently dried mud.
Under the safe patronage of certain eyes, I casually plant the initial of my name into the earth’s breast.

Walking along,
I come to stand before the memorial column of some great person. It’s quite possible
that this column was built
in memory of someone who was
never great at all, but who has been
presented as great. This world has been told
many things that are incongruous. Wandering among various monuments and
historically significant fields, I encounter an ancient bridge and suddenly dream of a dam. We do need a dam, don’t we? I’ve heard it’s sinful not to visit museums. So I went
there too. I saw
the grand symphony of stillness playing on. Not that everyone hears that music, though! I also witnessed the state’s entertainment arrangement for its subjects—sea fish trapped in underground
glass chambers. How fountain water
spreads light in the garden at night, and the exuberance of those who will be busy the next midday
with various concerns—
amid seeing all this, I caught sight
of some retired old
boys who had settled into a card game in the shade of the garden’s Christmas tree. I watch, I enjoy watching, so I watch.

Nearby, on a bench, an old man bent with the weight of years sits gazing at the sky, thinking perhaps that this old sky has no room left, that he must search for another sky. After all, one needs a sky to live! His gaze is fixed, unmoving. Gripping a walking stick firmly with both hands, resting his chin upon it, he has been staring into emptiness for hours, lost in memories of thoughtlessness. I watched this old man with profound wonder, trying to discern whether his hidden strength was truly strength or weakness. I saw that there was not the slightest trace of frailty in him. His lips were not moving, not a drop of saliva fell from them. His eyelids barely blinked. When I looked at him against the sun, the creases of his skin became visible. He had learned to be very careful about his shadow. Perhaps he had left some marks of age somewhere unknown, which gradually became familiar in the sun’s shadow. Had the old man gone mad? If so, it could be said without doubt that he had begun to behave rather like a sundial. But perhaps I lacked the patience to stay there longer and dispel my doubts! I had returned. This is how I always return!

Still, I too want to be like him, gazing at one sky while searching for another. But I cannot do this. Perhaps because of my young age, and lacking the experience or steadiness to think like an old man, this is what happens. I become restless very easily. When I walk on sand, I drag my feet through it. Someone with composure would not do this, and walking this way brings little joy. My gaze does not remain fixed and still; without my knowing, it wanders elsewhere. I place the five fingers of my left hand between the spaces of my right hand’s five fingers, then pull them away again. Sometimes I clasp both hands together tightly with fingers interlocked. Then I loosen them again. Wherever my two feet take me, I go in that direction. I have no personal destination or chosen path. Sometimes I get lost, wandering in unknown circles. I enjoy being lost. Those who cannot lose themselves have much sorrow. Sometimes I set myself ridiculous goals. Of course, my interest in none of them lasts very long. I lose interest in things very quickly.

Sometimes, I suddenly wander into a bookstore.
I spend a long time there. I pick up some books, flip through them, and secretly fold down a few pages when the shopkeepers aren’t looking. I put on an air as if I’ll come back another time to read those marked passages. But really, I just do it for the sake of doing it! I don’t actually read a single line of any book, though I stare at the pages for long stretches of time. When I see a painting, I stop before it with great interest, tilting my head and neck left and right, leaning forward or backward or bending to either side, trying to view the artwork properly. For quite a while. At some point I discover that all this time I haven’t actually been seeing anything at all. This is what I do. Every time. When leaving the gallery, I write something beautiful and incomprehensible about the artwork in the comment book, as convoluted as possible, and below the comment I leave my illegible signature, some random phone number, and a false address—even though I haven’t understood the meaning or meaninglessness of any of those artworks.

Sometimes, I enter a café and sit at the table furthest back, reading every line of some newspaper with deep concentration. At some point I realize that I haven’t retained anything of what I’ve been reading all this time. It’s a good exercise. Reading through everything, enjoying the act of reading, then forgetting it all. So much precious information swarms before my eyes, and here I am reading everything while reading nothing at all. Actually, I am reading, but retaining nothing. There’s a different kind of pleasure in this style of reading. Who won the Nobel Prize in literature and what happened after a wife caught her husband’s affair red-handed—both are equal to me; I won’t remember either piece of news. Which city was ravaged by a storm and left in ruins, or where a bank was robbed, or that the world gained yet another single mother—none of this draws me in. Rather, what truly amazes me is that lovers around the world continue writing the same kinds of lies to each other century after century, and apparently accepting them too, and probably will continue to do so in the future.

But what does any of this have to do with me? Whatever these things might mean, why am I even thinking about them? My only task is to pass the time that lies before me. What happened where, what didn’t happen—what use is it for me to know? Every day, every moment, one after another, some indistinct curved lines descend in winding paths from above across the wall in front of my eyes. To see them, to catch them, I must keep my gaze fixed for some time. They come down from above, descend below, sometimes leap up and go back up again or shift to one side. Eventually my vision grows dim. Everything in front becomes blurred. This sensation is wonderful. Along with the lines there are some circles too. The interesting thing is that the lines are created by the side-by-side positioning of two lines, and inside each circle there is at least one more circle. This is most clearly understood when looking toward the light. I am indifferent to the world—this indifference doesn’t mean stupidity, rebellion, or resentment. It is simply indifference. There’s no point in searching for other meanings in everything. I don’t want to speak anew of the joy that exists in remaining ignorant, but rather I’m entirely against any exaggeration of the fatigue and joy that simultaneously work within reading something, within knowing. One doesn’t have to read books for joy. There are many other places to find joy.

I am neither against nudity nor against clothing. Let each person live as they feel comfortable. Nudity is beautiful, clothing is beautiful too. Beauty is a very relative matter. Many people starve themselves thinking they’ll look more beautiful. They think, well, I have to die anyway, might as well die hungry! Meanwhile, I would much rather die from eating than die from not eating. It’s not that I have experience of dying from eating—it just feels that way to me. I actually have no experience of dying at all, yet I often feel like dying. Everything in this world has a first time. First sight of a river, first touch of a mountain, first day at school, first movie, first shave, first kiss, first physical union. And so too, first death! I eat. I sleep. I walk. I wear clothes. Sometimes I sleep naked, walk naked around my room, stand before the mirror and observe my own nakedness. These behaviors and actions are personal to me. Money has nothing to do with them. Because money has nothing to do with them, these things are precious. I don’t care what these actions of mine mean to you or anyone else. What I wear, what I eat, what I read—none of these will help you recognize me easily. Once they might have. That was my mistake. Making oneself easily recognizable is a kind of error. Now I no longer like defining myself through any particular thing. The whole matter is deeply wearisome, annoying, sometimes even painful. Take this, for instance: I slept naked. You assume I’m a nudist. But it could just as well be that I was feeling hot, or I simply felt like it, so I slept naked. Have you ever tried sleeping naked to see how it feels? It might feel good! Then why are you filing mine away in the rejection pile without even knowing? There’s really nothing here worth analyzing. Life is so brief, and yet we spend it thinking about others according to our own rules. Does any of this make sense?

I eat once or twice a day. Not that I don’t eat more than that. I simply don’t remember to eat, and when I do remember, I don’t feel like eating, or don’t feel like going out to buy food. Sometimes I don’t even have money in my pocket to buy food. Then I feel like falling in love. Someone to look after my eating. The very next moment, that desire fades away. Actually, I don’t feel like doing anything at all. Well then, a piece of meat. A few pieces of fried potato—though they call it French fries. A glass of red wine. These are merely protein and other nutritional elements. Why do people call all this love? You have to go to restaurants to eat these things, otherwise it’s apparently not love! The meaning of this sentiment isn’t quite clear to me. That beefsteak made from meat—this too stirs up storms in some people’s minds! Some ordinary fried potatoes, which must be lovingly called French fries or wedges! A glass of red-colored liquor that supposedly shows the way to an uncertain life! And there are so many categories within that! Tell me, does the stomach understand these distinctions? If it did, wouldn’t everything end up the same color! Please forgive me—I happen to like the color yellow.

The same thing,
after passing through
certain processes, becomes something else entirely. Inedible tough meat transforms into beefsteak. Fresh
potatoes instantly become chips or French fries. Grapes or fermented rice turn into delectable wine.
And then some people even write poetry about that wine! Poor things enter the kitchen with melancholy faces,
and emerge in all their tempting
attire, making mouths water at the very sight.
What we call someone or something depends on what that person or thing deserves to be called. If it weren’t so, I would have gone around calling every woman in the world
my beloved! Oh, how wonderful that would have been!
The outward appearance of anything changes its meaning and acceptability. We’re doing fine,
eating well, feeling good. But some sorrows, some troubles, some shame remain attached to all this. How so?
Eating fried potatoes grows the belly.
Eating meat breeds arrogance. And wine, well, it gradually makes people rather irritable,
though it certainly keeps some
intoxicated with love! There’s no need to think about all this. When food appears before us, we must simply eat it. Whether it’s breakfast,
lunch, dinner, or any meal at all, it’s better to eat without explanation or logic. I quietly drink my red wine,
I have no objection to consuming beefsteak or French fries
either. I know that eating whatever we please brings death closer. Eating is pleasure, dying is simple! Yet when food
appears before us, thoughts of death never cross our minds.

When I need to go somewhere
I take the most circuitous routes. I don’t enjoy walking straight paths. There’s little joy in going directly from point to point. Taking a slight detour somehow provides a kind of joy of discovery. I
wander off to see monuments, count places of worship,
admire exquisite
sculptures. I examine public toilets meticulously, peek into restaurants. Which public
toilets have non-functioning flushes, where they don’t keep soap at the basins—I know it all by heart.
Big buildings rise, pleasing to behold.
Roads are built, flyovers soar overhead.
Pleasant to watch. The city’s drainage system improves, mountains are flattened to build apartments. Forests cleared away! Animals
flee, humans move in. I observe all this,
I think. What am I thinking? I can’t understand. I try again to think and
fail. Then I return to my room and collapse with a thud onto my narrow bed.

I count the fine cracks in the ceiling again and again. I often play cards with myself. I make myself my own opponent. Then I bring my opponent’s trump cards over to my side. Sometimes I play with all four aces removed. The game continues with the remaining forty-eight cards. It’s great fun to wander through a kingdom with all the overlords banished. I don’t always play by fixed rules. Sometimes I make up my own rules as I go. I strip the most powerful cards of their power. I seat the subjects on the king’s neck. They too want to sit on the king’s neck, don’t they? I let even the weakest card win. Sometimes, when the mood strikes, I restore power to the king. Let the king understand what it feels like to hold power for just a while! Here there’s no possibility of winning, no fear of losing. Here there is only the joy of playing. What does it matter, really, if you win or lose? When subjects rise against the king, it’s great fun to make them king instead! You’ll see—they all run away from the royal throne in fear! It takes strong shoulders to bear such weight. Not everyone can do it. I think to myself: if I lose, I lose. I can’t play by so many rules. I’ll play however I feel like playing. My greatest advantage is this: to survive, I don’t have to win. What you call losing is simply a part of living to me. Winning is the same. I rarely win at cards. Winning feels so exhausting. When you win, some burden settles on your head. I’m not the kind of person who carries such burdens around!

I lose, and I lose the next time too. I keep on losing. I have no obligation to win, no responsibility, no extra pressure. I love to live unburdened. But it’s not that I don’t know how to win! I lose because I want to lose. In any game, you can buy many grammars of winning in the marketplace, but no one has ever written a grammar of losing. To learn the grammar of losing, you’d have to speak with me. I am the creator of the grammar of losing. I shuffle the cards, deal to myself and my opponent, remove the aces, and then the game continues. Haphazardly. I don’t like playing in an orderly fashion—I like to play however the mood takes me. Eventually the game settles into a pattern. That pattern is novel and personal. The pattern is my own creation. To others’ eyes, it too is a kind of disorder. Let them think what they want to think. Their thoughts don’t touch me at all. I play by my own rules or lack of rules. The game continues. That’s what matters most. The game continuing means I’m still alive. The game is on! As long as you’re alive, you can create many grammars. You can start the game anew or find peace by never starting it again. My patience never runs out—I can lose with infinite patience in my heart. Not everyone can do that. I can, because I play to lose. Winning takes intelligence; losing takes courage. I sometimes even cheat at the game. When? When I see I’m about to win. I don’t want to win against myself. I don’t want to weigh myself down. Let them all win—I was born to lose!

Victory has no value for me. To truly lose, one must play with victory pushed far aside. If victory has any worth at all, it is only this: I must recognize when I am about to win, learn to identify victory itself, and cleverly push it away. Once I win, I lose the desire to play, fearing that next time I might lose. When I lose, the game continues. I play precisely for the temptation of losing again next time. Since I do not wish to win, once I have won, perhaps I will lose the desire to play altogether, fearing I might win again. I want the game to endure. I want it to continue for a long time. Here, winning and losing are not primary. Sometimes I play through entire afternoons. Sometimes I wake up and sit down to play with a cup of Nescafé in hand. Many nights in my life I have spent sleepless, playing cards until dawn—such nights have come before and will come again. Truth be told, there is nothing in card-playing that truly captivates me. Taking a bath, pouring water over my naked body in the bathroom, is far better. Another wonderful game is lying in bed and staring fixedly at the light. Some opaque, crooked lines and circles on the cornea—in two or more layers—somehow drift down from above, sometimes sliding to one side with a sudden flutter. When I blink, they descend again from above—new lines and circles. I want to wait and see when they will come down, in that expectation. Still, I play cards more than anything else. My emotions are entangled in it. When I lose, I become overwhelmed with the joy of being alive.

Being alive. Such a beautiful phrase. Pleasant to contemplate, even more pleasant to understand. What do people do during the time of being alive? Who does what, I don’t know. But for now, I keep myself vital in various ways—sometimes I put myself in danger, then manage everything again. I make some plans, try to connect one with another. I often fail at this work. Some additional troubles come and present themselves. These troubles have no punishment; rather, when troubles come, it’s good—truly very good—then some order returns to life’s various elements. When people make mistakes, their feet stay on the ground! Whatever the case, just forty-eight cards keep me trapped in this room. There is no ace there, there is no king. Where the king shows no fear, being alive becomes a great joy. When I move calculatedly toward defeat, if at that very moment some faint possibility of winning appears, I feel tremendous fatigue. I follow certain strategies about moving forward. I am alive with these very strategies. I don’t need to win, I am quite well having lost, I have no opponent, I am my own opponent—by inserting such understandings into myself, I have kept myself alive until now.

Darkness. I close my eyes. Open them. It’s happening again. What is it? Something like tiny lines and circles drifting downward inside my eyes. In two layers, slowly, swaying, swinging this way and that. They come, they disappear. I open my eyes, close them. Sometimes they settle right in the center of my cornea. Stay there for a long time. They remain as before. Some are shaped like discs or bubbles. Others resemble broken tender branches of trees or the curved stems in the heart of flowers. How wonderful it feels when I see those lines, circles, bubbles merge together and somehow take on the form of mythical monsters from imagination! I watch them. I lose them the very next moment. Then I search for them again. When something is lost, it must be sought. But not everything that’s lost needs to be searched for. Only what we feel like seeking, what makes our hearts restless when lost—that’s what we must search for. When I rub my eyes, those circles and lines vanish, the imagined structures crumble and disappear. Yet they return again, and it is I who bring them back.

Time passes. I feel sleepy. I set the book aside and lie down on the bed. Everything becomes hazy, blurred. Everything trembles before my eyes. My breathing is normal. Hours turn into days, days into weeks, weeks into seasons. None of it affects me. I keep myself detached. Sometimes I discover I’m feeling quite good. I try to understand why I feel good. It seems I am free, nothing really troubles me, nothing makes me happy, nothing irritates me—that’s why I feel good. Life wears away. Living itself brings decay. When the new comes, the old decays. What’s new in my life is already old. There is no decay in my life. Some moments are lost, some happiness just comes, I feel joy, sometimes new emotions arrive and weigh me down. I live within a beautiful parenthesis. Me, with two walls on either side. The ends of those walls cannot be seen.

I exist within such infinite emptiness, an emptiness full of promises, from which I expect nothing. I am invisible, transparent, serene. You won’t find me in the flow of passing time; look toward the days that have ended—I’m not there either. No one has ever found me in the cycle of seasons or the current of time. My existence is elsewhere. In this surviving, there is no joy, no sorrow either. No future or past. What is there then? Not much really, but if you insist on knowing, let me tell you: water drips from that broken tap onto the floor with a drip-drop sound, six socks are rotting in a pink plastic basin, a fly buzzing just below the ceiling or the curse of that helpless man watching his own life move at a snail’s pace, a leaf keeps falling endlessly from a tree in the corner of the roof, a mouse plays beneath my bed. That’s it! Beyond this, I really have nothing else to say.

Once upon a time, this coolness feels good. A kind of happiness plays in the eyes. My ghostly existence gradually begins to see the face of light. Peace descends upon weary lips—there is no bitterness there, no reproach whatsoever.
I step out onto the street. I touch no one, simply walk on. There’s no need to think about clothes. The old ones always feel wonderful. No matter how carefully worn, all clothes eventually tear. Standing before the mirror in torn clothes, I look at myself and say wow! This too is a kind of being alive. Who are you to decree that this cannot be called living? Can’t you see that I am alive, just like this!
I don’t particularly like anyone in particular; I like everyone. Even with such detachment, I’m doing quite well! This walking, this wandering—these are actually a kind of gesture. I don’t want anyone to understand that gesture. One who has no gesture of their own has no meaning in living. Unless absolutely necessary, I can spend day after day without saying much of anything. To live, one doesn’t have to speak at all. Despite much effort, I still haven’t been able to extract from my mouth those few phrases: please, hello, thank you, goodbye. It seems to me there’s no point in saying such things. People say them merely for the sake of saying them. I don’t want to ask anyone which direction I should go. I wander about. Not in any specific direction—forward, backward, sideways, or perhaps in no direction at all. What greater joy is there than not having to follow anyone’s words? I walk. For me there is no such thing as walking in the day, walking in the evening or dusk, or walking at night. I walk without keeping time in mind. All times look the same, all places look the same.

I am never in a hurry, nor do I fear getting lost. I don’t feel sleepy, but I don’t feel like staying awake either. I don’t feel hungry, though I have no objection to eating. Wherever time takes me, I go along. I have no preferences or dislikes of my own. My favorite bird is the crow, because it alone doesn’t need to be sought—it appears before you on its own. I have no interest in searching around to make some bird my favorite. In the gray flock of gray crows, the road ahead looks gray. Why does it look that way? Is there no light there? Or is there light, but I can’t see it? Or have the gray crows made everything gray? Where there is no clamor, if you listen closely you can still hear a kind of clamorous sound. A wall, some people, a tree, some water, a veranda, a few garden plots. Over there, the colors and lips of advertisement posters, the paved road, the crossroads beloved by pedestrians. The shopkeeper’s flat face topped with a shiny advertising mustache. Written on the sidewalk: Stop. Written by the roadside: Go that way. A stream of names comes before the eyes unbidden. Hair ribbons and clips for girls are being sold over there, visible. Here there are more footprints than people. On top of the traffic island, a few madmen are laughing and shouting—they have no clothes on their bodies.

I walk,
sometimes I don’t walk. I sleep,
sometimes I don’t sleep. I buy the paper,
sometimes I don’t. I eat,
sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I sit
still, sometimes I stretch out my arms and legs and lie down,
sometimes I simply stand. I once sat
in a corner of a dark auditorium. For a long time. Why I was there,
I can’t remember. Perhaps there was no reason at all! If I feel like lighting a cigarette, I do; if not, I still do.
I cross the street, if the mood strikes I take a boat
across the river. If I can’t find a river, I pause for a bit, then look again. At some ATM booth on the street
I slip in my card to see if it’s still
working. There’s no money on the card, sometimes there never is.
I don’t need money on my card, I just
need the card itself. And I need it
in working condition. Why? It feels good,
that’s why. I like going into ATM booths
to check my card.

Indifference is such
a thing that has no beginning,
no end. It’s an
unchanging state, immobile inertia. What was
in the beginning remains at the end, the reflection of beginning and end is the same. When the red
light comes on I don’t cross the street, I cross
at other times instead. Cars are moving, I signal with my hand
to stop them or skillfully zigzag across the street—this is what I like. To light a cigarette you have to shelter it from the wind,
on winter mornings
you have to arrange warmth for the body, returning from the field you have to change sweat-soaked trousers, wash socks and underwear. Some wash once a week,
I wash a bit more often,
whatever suits
each person. There’s no rule for this, nothing
to make a fuss about. Nothing in the world has any fixed rule. If someone lives irregularly
and stays well themselves and it causes no harm or inconvenience to anyone, then that irregularity becomes their rule. Rules change
with time and place. What we don’t understand, we dismiss simply because we don’t understand it, yet it too has its own
language. That language isn’t like our familiar languages. Not even like any gesture
we know.

Sometimes it happens—
perhaps I have patience,
but I don’t feel like
waiting. I could escape if I wanted, but I’m choosing captivity. I could do many things if I wanted, but I don’t feel like doing anything. I
don’t listen to anything attentively, yet I hear
everything. For me, hearing means simply
sound reaching the ears. I look, but I don’t see.
There are cracks in my room’s ceiling, cracks in the floor. I
connect those crack-lines in my own way to draw all kinds of maps. The lines that rise and fall
in my eyes, I can see some of them in the folds of walls, in the folds of the floor. Some wild plants, the sound of water dripping from a broken tap, some flattened stones. Cars racing down the street,
some clouds alone, the sky turning black at times. I see these things,
I think about them. My
existence has no limits, no beginning,
no end. I was here,
I remain stuck here. Both
by choice. This isn’t called exile, this is called living.
My living proceeds according to my own will.