…nful: this hammering, this cutting and carving that gives me shape.
And with shape comes memory. So much of it! All at once, all at the same time. With every chip off the block comes shape, and with shape comes all the memory of the world. Everything that will ever happen to me, everything that will ever happen, everything that has ever happened hammered into me, as the sculptor’s chisel makes me less than I was. The memory of the world carved into me.
I can’t yet see the man who’s carving me: he has yet to put the eyes in. Jet-black beady eyes that will make me see the things I already knew the look of, the moment that world-memory came into me as the sculptor started making me: as the chisel cut into me, driven by his oh! so expertly handled hammer. Had I been a woman, this would have been my defloration. Had I been a deer, this would have been the shaft shot from afar that pierced my lung and made me vomit blood. But what was I: I was a block of boxwood. And what did I get, not death, not fulfilment. Only shape. And with the onset of shape, memory.
I can feel it now, what I’m becoming: what he’s making me. He’s making me a lohan. I can feel the plies of my robe! Not on my body, no. There’ll be no body underneath, there’ll just be my robe’s plies. I’ll just be my robe’s plies. Are they heavy! Nothing like the silk on a woman’s skin, nothing like the fluff on a deer’s underbelly. Solid boxwood plies…
I say I can feel what I’m becoming. That’s not true, though. There’s only the remembering, never the experiencing. No pain: only the everlasting instantaneous memory of pain. And not just my own, either: all the world’s pain, all at once. The woman’s. The deer’s. Remembering, not feeling. For me to be able to feel, I’d be needing time: and time’s the one thing that he can’t give me, this man hammering and carving and cutting the world’s memories into me. So forgive me if I speak of feeling. I’m just saying that.
Why am I saying that? Because I want to be like you.
So there, I’ve said it: I want to be like you. To experience time. To feel. Forget. Instead, here I am: on the sculptor’s bench, acquiring shape – slowly, slowly! Here I am, already suffering neglect: rain and wind rubbing the paint off my robe’s plies. Here I am in the ship’s hold, here I am in transit, in storage, at auction… Here I am in a clean, well-lighted place – speak, memory! – where schoolchildren visit and call me Johan (“Hey Johan, how’s things goin’?”).
Here I am… I could go on, but I won’t. I am tired of doing your remembering for you.
I say ‘I’ and ‘you’, but what do I know of ‘I’ and ‘you’? Nothing! Not having time, how can I speak of ‘I’ and ‘you’…? I have only memories. The woman’s and the deer’s, as well as the memories of the man who loves the woman and the memories of the hunter who shoots the deer… Also, the memories of the man who carved me into being a lohan. I contain the memories of everyone and everything that ever lived and felt.
So can I even want to be like you? Is me wanting to be like you not just a memory, too? A memory of you looking at me wanting to be like you? Am I not only doing your remembering for you, but also, by remembering, your feeling…?
Don’t answer this if you don’t feel like it. I know – I remember – how awkward this is. There’s you looking at me wanting to be like you. There’s you doing the feeling without the remembering and me doing the remembering without the feeling.
But you know (and I know) that it could all just as well be the other way around. Which would be perfectly OK with me. If only it weren’t all so very pai…
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Illustratie: een lohan – anon., 1200-1400 nChr. (China): Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
