The Discourse

December 30

A lot of things have happened over the past two weeks. Too many for someone who’d rather turn inward for a while, detached from pressing obligations; someone who wants to let the inner discourse become clearer, and allow themselves to pay it sufficient attention. But today I’ve had a tune stuck in my head instead of the discourse, and for me that’s a clear sign I haven’t slept well. Not only last night, but for many nights now. And for various reasons.

The story of the dog at one point took a tragic turn. He already had a habit, during what I call his time in heat—when, as I’ve said, he becomes manic and aggressive—of disappearing from home for long stretches of time, sometimes even overnight. There was a period of a few days in which he passed only fleetingly through the house each afternoon to wolf down a few pieces of meat. And then one morning, around midday on Wednesday the seventeenth, if I remember correctly, the maid gave me the bad news as soon as I was awake: the dog had turned up injured, looking like he had “something in his eye,” and now he was out in the courtyard. It was a moving sight. The dog was hunched in a corner in the shadows, his head bowed, and every fiber of his being seemed to say he was depressed—and in pain too, no doubt. I had to knock hard on the window before he eventually, laboriously, lifted his head and met my gaze. It wasn’t a face I wanted to see again in a hurry. His right eye socket looked completely empty.

I was convinced he’d lost an eye, and the vet later confirmed this diagnosis. By then I was feeling very uncomfortable indeed. I immediately remembered all this written testimony about the dog and his freedom. I remembered how I’d been largely responsible for said freedom and how when the dog eventually decided to widen the gap between the metal post and the wall, it was because I’d tempted him into it. This freedom, I thought, had cost him dearly. And however much I told myself it was better this way, that a life without freedom is worthless, etc., there was no ignoring the guilt eating away at my insides. Maybe that’s why—though there were practical reasons as well—I stopped writing this. I’d already noticed, a few years before, that this kind of writing has uncontrollable magical effects, and I can’t escape a powerful, superstitious feeling of awe and trepidation whenever I do it, as if I were stealing fire from the gods.

There are other kinds of writing, let’s call them literary, which have never had this “magical” power for me. What I refer to as my inspired writing, for example, was something I did compulsively; it came ready-made from the inner depths. But when I try to address what people call reality, when my writing becomes current and biographical, I can’t help unconsciously bringing these mysterious hidden mechanisms into motion. Then they begin to interact secretly, or so it seems, with various visible effects.