The Endless Week, page 24
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My children, I don’t know if there’s anything you need to know.
YEAH YEAH YEAH
YEAH YEAH YEAH
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Hello, everyone, today I have a new video for you on the subject of time, meaning murderers. Imagine a murderer, one that kills children. He cuts them up and he eats them. You say: That’s horrible. You say: His hands are horrible. You say: I don’t understand the look in his eyes. You say: He’s a mistake. You say: I can’t imagine myself in his shoes. You say: He’s sick. However, the beginning of evil is inside you. The beginning of evil is in every person. The beginning of evil is in each part of your person. On your faces and your hands, in your spinal columns, inside your cells and in your nails, look closely at your reflection. Take an honest look, just once. Honestly, your reflection wants to leave when you look at it, right? Don’t you think? If you’re honest, if you look your reflection in the eyes, you can tell it wants to leave. Don’t you think it wants to leave? Look at yourself, we all look like ourselves, I look like myself, you look like yourselves. We look like our images, but we don’t look one hundred percent like ourselves. Do you see what I mean or not? Your reflection looks like you, but it doesn’t look like you. It doesn’t talk. It will never talk to you. You can talk to it. It will never respond. It’s calm, and even when you’re angry, it’s calm. When you’re beside yourself, when you’re furious, look in your mirror. Your reflection stays quiet. It’s always quiet. It lives in calm. And murderers are murderers, but it’s not because of murder, it’s because of what surrounds it. Do you know what I mean? Murder is always surrounded. It has its inner circle. You can kill to defend yourself, you can kill without meaning to and that’s not a crime, but it’s a murder. Sometimes a lie, a detail, a drop becomes a crime. You eat a starving person’s piece of bread, you raise your hand to denounce someone who didn’t do anything. The crime is on the outside. The crime is outside the criminals. But when we see it, when we hear it, when we smell it, crime enters us like an odor. It touches our evil. In some countries, you can be condemned to death. In Cambodia, for example, you take twelve policemen, you give them rifles, eleven of them contain blanks. At the moment of an execution, the policemen shoot the man, who dies. No one knows who killed him. There’s no guilty party. There’s no murderer. But there is a dead man. The murderer who feels innocent is innocent. The murderer who feels like a murderer is a murderer. In general, there isn’t a murderer. In general, there’s no difference between a murderer and a non-murderer. One day, a murderer is born, but one day, a murdered man is also born. The two men were made in the same way, from a clump, a clump of blood. From a seed, a ball. You were all balls. They were balls. I was a ball. We’ve all been balls. A ball. A clump. Like a piece of blood gravel. If we wanted to show the beginning of a person, it would be half a centimeter on the tip of a single finger. That’s the beginning of a person. Later on, the ball would make a head and legs, arms, eyes, a look, a voice, fingerprints. When you’re walking in the street, look at the faces, imagine clumps of blood. Look at your parents, your grandparents, look at your ancestors, imagine clumps of blood. You can see the past, if you concentrate, you can see other people’s pasts. You can see the world’s past.
He took two sips of coffee. The room was dark, very neat, he turned toward the camera, he said: I’ve lived inside a woman. But where was I before that? And you, where were you? Did you exist? My father and my mother made me, I’m a part of my mother and a part of my father. I’m fifty percent my father and fifty percent my mother. I am a piece of two people but there’s nothing new in this piece. It’s a mix of former people, former things. There’s nothing new. You are a mix of former people. We are a mix of former people. If we were in a video game and someone removed the information you are in a video game from our brains, we’d have no reason to believe we were in a video game. We wouldn’t have any way to imagine it. It would be reality. Maybe thoughts appear in our brains because of chemistry, and nobody is responsible. We’re not responsible. When we’re proud of ourselves, we’re proud of chance. When we think we’re strong, we really think chance is strong. When we think we’re beautiful, it’s chance we find beautiful. But we transform. Look around you, look at your life, people change you. When you talk to someone, you transform. You transform them. If the person whispers, you whisper. If the person says stupid things, you say dumb things. If a person doesn’t respect you, you don’t have respect for that person. We can’t control it. Do you wonder how much an airplane weighs? Maybe you don’t care, but an airplane weighs seventy-seven tons, or the weight of one person multiplied by 140,000. And why am I talking about airplanes? It’s because they fly.
When I was six, I was at an airport with my father and we were sitting in the dark because of an electrical outage. It went on for hours. We couldn’t see anything. I closed my eyes. I was hungry. My father put bread in my mouth. I recognized the taste of bread. I thought: Why does bread taste like bread? Bread tastes like bread to me, but bread tastes like bread to other people too. Why do foods taste like anything? Why can I recognize the taste of a food? Even me. Even a child. I was a child then, I thought: Even me. Am I the same as everyone else? Am I a copy of everyone else? I thought about trees. You see long rows of trees on the road, they look alike, they run alongside each other, they’re twins, triplets, they’re linked. They grow for the same reasons. They grow because of things in the earth. Things that die and go into the earth, animals, plants, food, and even trees when they die. They go into the earth. When we die, our bodies rot in the earth and trees grow. When a tree dies, its body rots in the earth, but we don’t grow. Humans don’t grow the way trees do. Trees grow, they grow from the bodies of dead trees. They grow from the bodies of dead animals, from the bodies of dead humans, but humans don’t grow that way. We can spray water on our dead, we spray water on cadavers, but humans don’t grow. Maybe flowers or mushrooms, but humans don’t come up. Humans don’t come from dead trees, they don’t come from dead animals, humans don’t come from dead humans, they don’t come from the earth. So, what do humans come from? A human comes out of a human that came out of a human, but we don’t know where humans come from. Maybe the same people have been coming back forever. You’re watching my video now, but you’ve watched it in other lives. You’ve lived 1,000 times in your house, in your apartment. I’ve made this video 1,000 times. I’ve been born a thousand billion times. I’ve died a thousand billion times. Always the same death. Always the same life. Always the same. People from ages past live again in ages past. People from the Middle Ages live again in the Middle Ages. People today live again in the world of today. When we think about past ages, we might wonder: Where was I? Where was I in the Middle Ages? Was I already in the present? We were already in our age living and dying. Do you see what I mean or not? I did research. One part of our brain is for seeing, it’s in the back of our heads. Memories are in the lower part of the brain and the part that understands is above it. Movements and willpower are in the front, behind the forehead. But there’s no place for reality in the brain. I looked, but there’s no place for it. They’re looking for it, but it doesn’t have a place. Because we can’t find it, we believe. If you believe you exist, you have to believe in everything. If you exist, if the Earth exists, if trees exist, then all things exist. You can believe in God. Maybe it’s a man, maybe it’s a woman. Maybe she doesn’t think. Maybe she thinks: I’m god. All day long, she tells herself: I’m god. I’m god. She doesn’t think. All night, she tells herself: I’m god. I’m god. She doesn’t think. That’s her life. That’s God’s life. She doesn’t feel anything. She doesn’t hate anyone. She doesn’t love anyone. She is God, and that’s all. Meanwhile, we age like cars. If you buy a car, it doesn’t get any younger. It will get older and older, it will be harder and harder to drive. If you buy bread, it becomes hard a few days later, it won’t become fresh, it won’t become softer. If a flower is beautiful, it will die. Everything will get worse, that’s the only way it goes. We only go in one direction. You can kill someone, but you can’t make them come back to life. When you cut up an animal, you can’t stick it back together again. Everyone gets old the way a car does. Have you ever seen an old man sob? Type old man sobbing into your phone. Watch the video. There are videos of old men sobbing. There are thousands of videos of old men sobbing. Watch. Watch the person. They hold their heads in their hands. Watch the shoulders. They tremble. Watch them like clumps. They’re clumps of blood. Matter. It’s just matter. Do you see what I mean or not? I’m going to post my new poem yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah for you. Don’t forget to like and share, ciao.
He turned off the comment section.
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The oily steam softened the father’s lips. He waved his arms in the air, and he said: We’re going to have a good meal! At the same time, seated in a chair, her torso tied upright, the grandmother was drooling all over her bib. There she was with her brown face, almost black, her light sunken eyes, her body overflowing, obese, heavy. But her body emitted a sense of thinness. Cold. Around her face, around her hands, around her body, a veil, a sense that the chair held only an empty skin.
The father yelled: Wash her, wash her hands. Wash her fingers. Her fingernails. Under her fingernails. Sara. Salim. Scrub under her nails and on her nails. Take the sponge. Wash her mouth. No. Not like that. No, Salim. Harder. Not like that! You’re not helping. I’m asking you to help me but your help isn’t helping. That’s enough. Yes. Sit down, I’ll do it, I do everything in this house, I have to do everything.
The grandmother blinked twice. The father wiped the sponge over her face, he wiped the sponge over her hair and the back of her head and on her forehead, on the edges of her ears, around her neck and on her arms. He mumbled things they couldn’t understand. Suddenly, he turned to the gas stove, he took the pan and he put it under his children’s noses. He said: Look at these sausages, they’re grilling. They’re grilling, and what am I doing? What am I doing, Salim? I’m turning them. He said: I turn them and turn them, why? Why do I turn them? I turn them for you, so they don’t burn. Okay? So they get hot but they don’t burn, okay? So it tastes better. Okay? Does burnt food sound good to you? Do people like burnt food? Are there burnt food restaurants? Are there chefs that specialize in burnt food? No. Who wants something burned? Nobody. You hear that Salim? Nobody. So, you have to work. Yes. Work on the sausages. You have to work at everything in life, even sausages, are you listening to me? Listen to me!
Sara said: I went into the dark zone. The dark part of my room. I went inside it.
The father bit his lip, he caught a piece of dry skin with his teeth, he pulled, he bled. He said: The mayor said not to touch anything, you’re always making up stories. No matter where you go, you find a story. If I put you in a box, you’d find a story in the box. That’s for sure. A story anywhere. Part of your room doesn’t have any light. It’s not a dark zone. It’s not a hole. It just doesn’t have any light. Stop talking about it.
Salim asked: What was it like?
Sara said: It was dark. I was surrounded by darkness. I looked around me and there was only darkness. I couldn’t see myself anymore. I couldn’t tell where I ended and the darkness began. I let it take me, you know. I became the dark part, I became the place. I became the dark zone. I could have become a green part or a red part or a wall. I could have become anything. I felt like I could have become anything.
The father started yelling: Enough with these stories! And he dropped the pan on the fire. He moved the sausages several times, he sighed, a drop of blood dripped down his chin in a straight line. His face was burning. His cheeks were yellow and soft. He said: Now, we’re going to have a good meal. Are we here to enjoy a good meal or not? Is the family all together or not? We’re finally all together. We’re going to enjoy a good meal, that’s it. I don’t want to hear any more stories, Sara. I don’t want to hear anything else I don’t understand. I don’t want you to talk anymore. Let’s have a toast. That’s it, we’re going to have a toast, you hear me? Salim, get out the stemware, the fancy glasses, the ones up there in the back of the cupboard. I washed them eight times this morning. Eight times. Nine times. Get them out. Ten times. Twenty times. No. Don’t touch the cupboard with your fingers, don’t touch the door with your fingers. No fingers!
The father leaned his hands on the big table, then he lifted his legs. He tipped his body forward. But he didn’t have any strength, he slipped. He spread out his hands, he pressed down again, he lifted his legs and his pelvis. Finally, he got on the table and he held his glass in front of his face. He said: I’m raising a toast to this family in this house. His glass was empty. The grandmother burped. He said: I’m raising a toast to people who disappear and reappear and cause problems. His face sank into his shoulders. He pointed at his son, then he hit his own chest and he said: I raise a toast to the social worker and the problems I have to deal with. I raise a toast to all the problems in the world. I raise a toast to problems. I raise a toast to my daughter who leaves at night. Every night, I don’t even know where she goes, and when she comes back, she looks like a ghost. I raise a toast to the ghosts. Yes. To all the ghosts while I’m at it, all the family ghosts. To everyone who isn’t here. Sara said: Stop, Dad. But he was yelling: I raise a toast to people who can’t move and have to lie down 24/7. He winked at the grandmother, then he froze. He said: You’re going to make me burn my sausages! He got down, he tripped, he fell on his hands, on all fours. He was pretending to laugh, but his face contorted into a series of quick grimaces. He got up. He furrowed his eyebrows while smiling. He took the pan and he turned the sausages, then he tossed them in the air like pancakes: Hey, look at that. Hey. Did you see? He tossed them higher and higher. Three centimeters above the pan. Ten centimeters above the pan. One meter above the pan. Above his head. Two meters. Two and a half meters, then they touched the ceiling. He said: They’re ready. He salted them. He peppered them. He got on his stepladder. He started to clean the ceiling with a cotton swab. He cleaned up the edges of the stains, and then he erased them micromillimeter by micromillimeter with his tongue sticking out.
Salim touched the grandmother’s forehead, it was hard, like wax. Sick. She’d become sicker than every sick person. She was sicker than an animal on the side of the road. She’d gone so far into sickness that, today, she was sicker than sickness. Every part of her body harbored sickness to the highest degree. Sickness lived everywhere on her and her clothing. If you put a cardigan on her, the cardigan would start to look sick. If you put a blanket on her lap, the blanket would start to look sick. The grandmother was sick in every detail of her body and every noise in her body, and all the smells of her body said: I’m sick. Her sickness was profound, thick, and vast like a long, flat, gray moon, sprawling, treeless, mountainless, and empty. And when Salim focused, he could hear it. The liquid sickness, heavy in her body. Was she proud of it at least? Like a child showing off and counting their scars at recess. Like a child drawing scars with a black marker or wearing bandages without a wound to decorate their legs. They wear wounds like medals. They wear sicknesses like crowns, like a brooch, like a scarf. You can wear sickness like a rare piece of clothing. Salim asked: Are you proud? And the grandmother blinked twice.
Time to eat! The father set the plate of sausages down. Salim said: You have blood on your chin. The father wiped a sponge over his lips. Salim said: It’s dry, you have to scrub. The father used the rough part of the sponge. He made his lips red: Is it okay now? Salim said: It’s better.
Please eat! Enjoy. Dig in!
And they ate. But all of a sudden, Salim got bored. He thought about babies, babies in strollers, in cradles. We put babies on their stomachs, on their sides, but they don’t do anything. Babies symbolize boredom. We put babies in chairs, but they have nothing to do. They can’t talk, they can’t read, they don’t even have phones. They wait and they suffer. We hear them crying, but they don’t have a choice. They have to wait. When he was little, Salim got bored. He got bored in the morning first, then he got bored in the afternoon. The sky was really long, he looked at it, he didn’t have anything to do. He often resorted to fear. When the grandmother was cleaning, when she was going from one spot to another, he’d hide behind a curtain, under a table, in a closet, and when she walked by, he would scream. The grandmother would jump, she’d clutch her chest, she’d lower her head, she’d breathe, then she’d say: Stop doing that, Salim. Stop doing that. You’re going to be the death of me, Salim. And sometimes she cried, then she smiled. She loved him, she’d say: You got me, Salim. You got me. And he thought: To get a person, you have to scare them.
