an assemblage goes north — It’s an old way, minus [plus 10]

(this is the process that I have kept the memory pictures but always mix up the order like in a box full of family photos to envy those who have no memory we do not keep the pictures nor even the date and time says Jerzyy this is the process the fairy tales of old tell of many wonders )

This is the process. We stutter. This is how, but not the why, that an assemblage whose elements will become clearer went north and then returned; the key thing in an assemblage is the use of AND, the AND is the conjunction that names the logic of the assemblage. But before we get to describing the assemblage lets pass through the straightforward relation of representation… It was this that describes what made me travel north to deliver the message, perhaps I as a messenger am the noise, the parasite causing the receiver of the message to stop and think. What is a parasite for but to give you pause? to disrupt the flow of communication and change the meaning(s). I am the assemblage that causes a stuttering of language across… we are alive because of the AND… it began when he (my he, my only he, he and i ) was in a meeting that had lasted an hour or more and then sitting there sipping tea listening to the agreement they had made with Dunbass and his family of swans, it was the absent investigators recommendation and fault, or if you prefer to identify the actual cause of his being in the meeting sipping tea, the universes, since he was sitting there because it wanted us to be there. So some of the people in the meeting agreed with the investigator that the child should be given back to the family for economic reasons […] this would not have happened in quite this way if they had cared about the child, they knew nothing about the child and never would […] In this sense then everything begins with an anomaly, a break which leads to an interrogation of place and practice. That one has seen young men emerge who overnight have become obese grey-haired old men and women. It was a fine sunny winter morning and we have come across a serious break on the network of the world… He sat in the meeting listened to the instructions, and tried saying “I don’t think that is a good idea”. Simple instructions passed across the table, which happens even though it is becoming extraordinarily overcrowded with humans and their things (and what isn’t their things?). Although nobody ever actually says anything, we wonder if we aren’t the only ones who have noticed what a terrible idea this is, but wonder in our madness if we dare say anything. But they insisted, all the way down the heirrrrrraaaaachy from the very top to him. He shrugs. Telling me later that there was nothing that could be done in this meeting of indifferent humans. “In January then?” He said “I can’t help with this until then. “ He didn’t listen to anything else that was said. He didn’t bother to listen to the answer. They are looking peculiarly at him. Was there something else they wanted? Was there something in his indifference that concerned them? They went onto talk about the photo of Peter Härtling in Cologne Brüderstraße in October, gaunt and foggy with cigarette smoke, transformed into a target because he is there with his his his sons, he has no daughters. This is the process… Some people live, some are returned, some die… messages and noise all the way down. Standing against the building opposite is a 48 sheet size networked screen, just waiting for the advertising image to change, on it at that moment there is a representation of what could be us appearing on it, an advert, except they end tragically and we don’t. It is unnecessary. There are the usual array of buildings standing aloof and with 9/10ths of the building hidden behind the facades, roads and streets spread out in all directions. The greyness of leafless trees hangs in the gardens and squares. And yet we recognise that it is meaningless for no one ever goes in, it is a conspiracy that cannot be broken. There is no way out. This is the process. There is insufficient breakage of place and practice. People move in, establish themselves and remain in stasis, not only unable to leave the place but actively prevented from doing so, whether it is the desire to appear in the limelight, the economy of enslavement or a gay parade which runs a thread of conspiracy through the streets, still there and concealed behind their self-importance like a broken desire. (“How much these people like killing people” He said to me that night.)

That I have kept the memory pictures but always mix up the order like in a box full of family photos , though I am nearly always with him. He AND I, we are an assemblage (in)finitely more dangerous together than apart. Occasionally as we walk through a square with a dozen multi-centenarian trees do we notice something else, a sudden stillness of place, from a recess where we notice that the trees are waiting for us to vanish. (The buildings crumble into ruins, the now empty courtyard transformed by the growth of trees…) The block of luxury flats entered through a metal gateway set in a tall archway, which masks the perfect crime of their existence. To envy those who have no memory or are indifferent to the consequences of their actions. He tells me of the meeting, we need to do something we decide, an invitation to act we decide walking across the square, we will live entirely on the surface and avoid the mystery of the break which would allow us to know what is happening. Either that or we will become part of the scenery, like the denizens of the luxury flats entering and leaving through the gates, we will become the story, perhaps even the providers of a final solution. “I invoke protection for the child.” He says to me. I put my arm around his waist. I will arrange the messages to be sent I told him. The delivery message being made of a poetical object made up of copper, lead, zinc. And so we arrive back at the break which leads to an interrogation of place and practices. This sharp tearing trail drawn through me. There is work to be done, identifying where the people who will carry the messages to the final destinations are. Let us draw up a list, an inventory of exceptions that will not reveal their qualities so much as interrogate them, forcing them to speak. We hope that as words slowly emerge, the places, lives will be recognized and acknowledged, the end of networks being drawn out by our post greyness of leafless trees hanging in the gardens and squares. And yet we recognize that it is meaningless for no one ever goes in, it is a conspiracy that cannot be broken. There is no way out, a geo-philosophical moment, no longer binary connections between geo-local nodes on the network but instead a mesh entanglement. No reconciliation. As we walk down the narrow street that parallels the market street we find our ideal refuge, where we can stop panicking like a lost city dweller with a broken semiosis system and relax. No glow of the evening of life for those people I am delivering the messge to. The investigator vanishes whilst I travel north.

Then we set off again, sitting like a nomad sipping coffee with slices of sausage keeping our eyes open as we look for details, it is only as we sit that we realize that we are getting somewhere, eventually standing and walking, our footsteps echoing on the pavementsss, an assemblage walking, getting in a car .. .. as Wittgenstein said “The world is everything that is the case” (such nice order-words) .. .. Faster, the past takes to the future faster. A denizen of a partial critique who wishes to be pure, I drive north, park the car in a secure place and get on a bus , I am delivering a message… This is the process. My travelling north was decided in an/the building north of London. I read the file and took the instruction sheet with me. Two days before the winter solstice, a week or so before the new years, a dry and cold day, bright winter sunshine, yellow light. [cut] The bus travelled north, the day had felt halted, paused, waiting to begin. Up here in the north it was freezing and the earth felt paused. There were clouds waiting to snow. Out here. On the bus route 314a running down into the valley, everything was closed, people passing in cars, parts of the road icy. The sun was low to the south, due south. I got off the bus at the bottom of the valley, watched the bus continue along the road before crossing. I began following the old sheep lane. I walked for about two hours through the frozen landscape. I had a tent, arctic quality sleeping bag, some extra clothes and some food. In the late afternoon it began to snow. dropping straight and settling at about an inch an hour. I kept walking. This is the process. At around 8 o’çlock it stopped snowing and the clouds thinned allowing moonlight to brighten my path. There were no humans about, silence, stars and moonlight. Around nine, i arrived at the road that led to the house, which was about a mile or two down this road and about two or four more miles down the old sheep lane, I walked for another twenty minutes before leaving the track and beneath a tree where there was little or no snow, erecting the tent with the compressed air. I heated some food and drank some hot chocolate. Drank some vodka from a flask and sat sat sat, listened listened listened and watched, watched, watched. A fox crossed the crossed the path looking for food. After it passed I tossed some legs of cooked chicken out for the fox to eat. The moonlight was very bright and casted some crystal clear moon shadows. I crawled into the tent took my boots off and lay in the sleeping bag. This is the process. listening in the dark, I had never been here before, so i used the passive GPS system and compass to pinpoint my position before closing everything down and sleeping. I sent a message to him. I slept well, tired slightly aching. The landscape was frozen, deflated the tent and left it at the foot of the tree, it had snowed again whilst I was asleep, another two or three inches of snow, heavy clouds in the sky. I rolled up the sleeping bag and carefully pack my bag with the things I needed to take with me and followed the grey snow covered lane towards the house, it took me an hour or so of walking until I arrived about two three hundred metres from the house. The small trail curved down hill leading to the house in the valley, the trail had no human footprints. I walked around the house studying the landscape. until I was above the house and could see the roadway leading towards it. I sheltered against one of dry stone walls and watched the house and road. Finally then I watched. To the north the land swooped smoothly away downhill. I was about 100 metres from the house and uphill, I watched , the hills were covered in white snow. There was a lake to the right of the house, frozen. Trees and copses of trees, hawthorn, beech and evergreens. There were some guards walking around the outside of the house. Discreetly armed and not expecting any trouble I thought. I waited and watched for an hour perhaps more. In the mid morning a car left driven by a woman, children on the back seat, luggage in the back. It was midday when the delivery van arrived, left some boxes on the front door, the driver spoke to the guards and drove off, an amazon van came and left some packages. This is the process. I waited and in the afternoon it started snowing again. Dundass and Burgan, his wife, stood smoking in the doorway, chatting with the two guards. I started walking down the hill it had been surprisingly undangerous. I walked down the hill, unzipped my jacket taking off the heated gloves. I, the assemblage (an assassin and a gun and bullets and boots) descending a slope, perhaps not as romantic as Deleuze’s man-animal-symbiosis (the knight+horse+stirrup assemblage of the medieval times) but more dangerous. An assemblage can be identified by the conjunctions and the constraints it exists within, years of psychotherapy had not cured me of my psychopathology, though it enabled me to live with it and him … This assemblage walked down the hill, I flexed my fingers. Afterwards I was singing as I walked around the ground floor of the house. There were no other people in the house. Turned the power off to the house… broke the communications systems, opened the south facing bifold doors, the kitchen door, the small safe was open, i emptied it. It was snowing as I left. I left them in the snow. The car started the first time, i drove it towards the road I’d left yesterday. The distance stretched oddly, or perhaps after the long walk time had compressed. It felt like hours before I reached the main road, I had originally planned to catch the bus after walking back the way I’d come. But still I was on assemblage time and it felt as if I had been moving for what felt like hours before I started driving along the road towards the town where I had left my car. The northern landscape was more familiar here and I parked their car in the car park of the Iron Age ring-fort that was on the outskirts of the town. Whilst walking dropping the keys, food and some other things in municipal recycling bins. Crossed the road and walked about a mile to the railway station where my car was parked. It hadn’t been touched. I changed clothes. And I drove south, leaving the town, driving away and buying a sandwich, cake and some coffee and water from the Starbucks. I drove up the hills and parked in a lay-by and ate my cake looking at a bronze age burial barrow. Was that built before the invention of the state or after? I wondered. I changed the rest of my clothes, looking back towards the town and thought of my tracks towards the house covered in snow, my trail already feint and vanishing behind me. I drove south, slowly at first and then on the dual carriageway faster, south wards… four hours later I slept for a few hours in the car in the service area…. It took me a while to drive home. This is the process… the people there never made it to 42, no glow of the evening of life, I don’t keep pictures or records, no date and time kept in a diary or files, scarcely even memories. This is the process… The universe needed someone to be sacrificed, they were selected. The child lived whilst these others died.

Eventually I left the motorway at one of the M. Keynes exits and drove through the A and B roads towards the hotel riga. The B road ran through the estate, the hedges were being allowed to grow taller, behind them we were planting trees, a wide mix of deciduous and evergreens. It was K’s carbon sink. I arrived back tired, weary. He was waiting for me, he put his arms around me and we reassembled. This assemblage (he AND i AND …) was originally constructed because without it he and I would have died. In this universe this is less likely but still neither of us wants to be with anyone else. We are probably incapable of it now. Sometimes in trains I see a body that makes me think of desire, but really they are always too young to touch… We emptied the car. Carried my luggage into the hotel riga. It was late morning, I had a drink, then a shower, he made brunch, Tiredly, exhaustedly I drank tea and we chatted about love, snow and other things. This is the process. He told me that <<they asked “Where is she?” I remembered the sense of panic when we had behaved like this before so I told them “She’s away for a few days on business.” >> I laughed, happy to talk about love, tiredness and Christmas and then ignoring the world I went to bed. Whilst I slept he emptied my luggage, sorting, discarding, washing what needed to be washed, putting the guns back into the safe in the library, The fairy tales of old tell of many wonders and him sitting across the table looking as young as those lucky ones who always make it out of fairy tales in one piece, is he the hero or prince? am I the demonic other or the princess? … we are an assemblage that instills fear and caution. This is the process. This is our business of living. This is love.

Perhaps I should remove all the commas…