a car and a park in autumn — part two

Part Two

i sit in the passenger seat and take another pill, washing it down with water from a plastic bottle, the second pill of the day. It was a pretty banal chat to begin with… How is your foot? He asked me before he began driving. It’s not too bad, bearable. I walked a little too far and I really shouldn’t have. I said, enjoying looking at his face. Why do I like that, sometimes, I thought. I guessed as much, you should stay home tomorrow. He said. I Know and will, I cancelled everything that needs me in the office for the next few days. Anything else I can do from home. I told him. Good, I’ll stay at home as well as nothing very interesting is happening at work. Do they know? No, just decided. Ï’ll tell them in the morning. How was the board meeting? The usual stuff, nothing particularly interesting — finance reports, yearly reports being prepared, a new software project that made some sense, probably over ambitious. work you know. And we have received a request for some more safe house management. Very vague and we need more details. Give me what you have and I’ll check for you… He said…. [enjoying the capital letters, capitalize the first word in a sentence, the pronouns, proper nouns, but can feel myself getting tired of this linguistic foolishness]

Her gaze is necessary to write about him — the gaze is one of the component instincts of our sexuality which exists as drives quite independently of the erotogenic zones. At this point I associate scopophilia with with with taking this person as objects, subjecting him to a controlling and curious gaze… Her gaze is necessary to write about him, here I/she is writing about being in the car being driven by him, her status (laughs) as the person who is both the narrator and writer of this. The person gazing at him, perhaps she should hide herself behind him, foregrounding him through his name (an initial capital letter and his ordinary name written down for you to enjoy) describing his appearance quickly and capturing how attractive he is to her. but really when she thinks about these sentences, the kind of name that she could give him doesn’t make sense, is unnecessary for this story, this vignette of leaving the park, being park, driving home. instead think of her sitting in the bar writing this, or on the passenger seat looking across the car as he faces forward, glancing in the rear view mirrors. putting the indicator and blue lights on… the traffic melts away as the porsche flashes blue lights and the tinted glass makes us difficult to be seen. would she write at all if her gaze didn’t seem to make it necessary. Being in the car satisfies a primordial wish for a pleasurable look, the gaze goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic agent, me, I laugh.

I was speaking to the other one last night, I said. I had propped my foot on the dashboard and leaned forward and began taking the bandage off my foot and ankle. Why? He asked. Just part of the comparison, I found something interesting. One of those moments which identifies the differences between us, perhaps it identifies the moment when we bifurcated. It’s when we met Osaka.. I thought it was the same, it seemed the same when you talked about it with her. I thought it was too, anyway its afterwards — she accepted the reprimand from her father, whilst I stepped back and refused it, she accepted it. She told me that when he calmed down he apologized to her, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I will sort this out….” I think this is the very first difference between us. I am rubbing my foot and ankle., massaging some life back into my aching foot. That’s better I say to him as he glances at my bare foot. Does the other one in Tokyo look at someone like this? Perhaps if we had manage to live at home in Japan, I would not be feeling like this. Gazing like this at the man driving the car, a police gliding through traffic. We would instead be being driven by drivers, sitting on the back seats being careful what we said, what we did, my hand could not be on his left thigh, touching his hand on the steering wheel to attract his attention, I could not lean against him as he drives, i could not say what I am about to, because the drivers job would have been to report such things to my mother. But what is this for these sentences spoken in the car, you might ask… I was told this morning that my father was dying in Tokyo of cancer, younger than me, older than my body, yesterday or tomorrow. Perhaps I regret not burying him again, or then perhaps its because as I said “Ï think I miss having a family grave…” watching him smile as we pass through Camden and begin the climb out of London. “Is this because he will die again?” And there you see is the core of my problem, our problem. That word “ägain, again” There are only three people in the world who understand what those sentences mean and so the three of us are inseparable. The others on the periphery of the three of us cannot really know what it is to be us…

A set of three. Yes I say to him, and I shouldn’t I know, but back home we had them and… yet it would be good. To kick his grave stone? he asked before adding, (When I was young I stole a copy of Finnegan’s Wake from the library behind that building, did the other one of me do that as well? Did you steal anything else? Deleuze’s book on Proust, a few other books…) Anyway what made you think of that? He asked. It was something the barista said, he is an exile like us, and was speaking about places, (Fleeing from my fellow countrymen i have now reached finland…. Curiously ,…towards the arctic i can see a small door. Through which we might escape..) That’s right I said, a hint towards a kind of geo-philosophy, losing his space, the places he knew in the world. His father was buried on a hill and he knows that he will never be able to visit him again… I explained before thinking -even though my mother is not really my mother when she dies again it will be very strange. He nods and without looking at me and says, “changing countries more often than shoes.” Family grave though, i wonder what it looks like, and then we are as old as your parents, though we are not the oldest people alive yet. I sit quietly after this wondering if we should stop off and buy some cheesecake in the bakery on the hill. I think better not — still it would be nice to go to the family grave once. After my mother dies, to tell my dead parents that I am back. I would leave a couple of bullets on their memorial.. He laughs, turning right at the top of the hill and driving along the road across the top of the heath. It might be possible because we work for the universe, it needs to speak better, clearer to us, straight english or japanese would be best. Come to think of it, it probably doesn’t want to speak in case we ask it for favours. Never, I’m hoping its forgotten us… Unlikely. You are thinking that because the situation is different, because the other one, lives in Tokyo, has never separated from her parents that they must be somehow better than yours, but its not true. Unforgivably they still made her into a psychopathic killer. If she had left and come here, hear, hear perhaps she would have been happier. So is this version of my mother less terrible than my mother? I asked. He shakes his head, no, in my view she is the same, a vicious abusive woman, it is the situation that is different. This other version of you, the one there is different.

Eventually we are driving the slightly longer way through Highgate, and beneath my gaze I can see him suddenly smile at something he is thinking of. — If you could visit the family grave perhaps before your mother dies, we could also see the other one. I liked seeing him smile, making light of the impossible. You could go to the house, my mothers house or perhaps even mine. I said to him. That’s true, My gaze, can I call it a female gaze or should it now be thought of as inhuman, or perhaps better non human… I don’t know. I suppose I love the man. If I did not I would not be sitting in the car. The man driving the car is smiling at the thought of fear as I say this to him. … if i wasn’t here with you, I would have to live as a monk or teach philosophy. He says me as he hits the siren. I have doomed the world by appropriating you, I said to him. True, but then i think our saving the life of the barista is more valuable than being a monk or an ontologist. He knows that the list of people I hate is very much longer than the people I love or even like, and I am gazing at/and/him the reason I have not killed them is here… driving us across the north circular…

So it was him then. What else did the barista say? He said he was from Turkey, but actually he’s a Palestinian, hoping not to be deported back to… Ah so he’s a terrorist according to the state? I think so yes, he was quite open about it. Once they have defined you as a terrorist there is no escape, he says, look at us after all. The barista was nice, rather than how they would define him he is really just an exile like us, stranded on the edges and unable to see Tokyo bay any more. An exile, define him like that and make him appear useful and vanish him into K. He was looking at me seriously as he said this, stopped at the traffic lights. You can only try, he adds and sighs, better than we did last time. What do you want to do about him? I asked. Let’s pretend we don’t know who he is, treat him like this and see if he can live better this time. If the barista is not alone he might stand a chance. Nothing is certain.

How was the board meeting? He asks me again. The finance reports, the yearly reports are being prepared. Software presented a project, its probably over ambitious, work you know. He is much more boring before Steve and Erro arrive. The request for safe house management — this is too vague and we need more details of the budget. I’ll validate it for you…

(And that was nearly all, a car driving northwards. Watching the motorway pass by behind his face, The memories of of people who I no longer know because they have vanished, because they have not yet arrived. This is incomplete as it may be because its focused around sex, desire, passion rather than language, children, tea and coffee. And then we get out of the car at home..)

A short time later, while I am standing standing in the house on […], the telephone will ring. rang. When the telephone rings, the doorbell will ring at the same time. When the telephone and doorbell ring, another telephone will ring in the house. When the telephones and doorbell rings, and at some distance another telephone and another doorbell will ring, other telephones and other doorbells will ring at a further distance. When she listens, standing there in the house, the voice of her husband will be heard. The voice of his wife, her voice, will be heard, speaking to the delivery driver; thanks for this, she will say she is Nomiko, even though she knows she is not and can hear in the background him speaking and her friend talking to the child… though friend does not begin to describe their relationships.