Dissipatio H.G. by Guido Morselli (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📕

the apex of a pyramid, upright or upside down as it may be, is a mere point. With no substance. So I have no grounds to exist.

Exercises in logic, these; innocuous, free of substance. Quite different from genuine ratiocination. This kind of thought is a good omen for me, it suggests my crisis is coming to an end. I’m recovering, coming up the slope. Ready to begin again.

16

STILL, the fear could come back. I’ll rely on a reagent then, to neutralize it.

The basic danger—the human being—is no more. The rest, what’s alive, is harmless: it is nature, in me and around me. Under the circumstances, any ordinary individual in my place would have a good chance of dying of old age. Illnesses are socially transmitted, directly, or indirectly (in the latter case, as in ailments caused by the tension that once derived from a shared existence, and so forth.) Now, there’s not much more than a bolt of lightning that can touch me, or an earthquake or a meteorite. Remote things.

It’s conceivable, I suppose, that the Event could repeat itself, directed specifically at me, but only just conceivable, and it would be presumptuous to fear it. It was a global phenomenon, aimed at the genus, not the individual. A single person’s unlikely to be rewarded or punished, that would be a waste. It would make no sense to replay the world championship of soccer just to test one individual, even if he were a revenant Pelé.

Now that the crisis is over, I react with exaggerated good cheer. With moony superficial optimism. Was that predictable?

•

A minor problem remains, however, a benevolent problem. I wonder what I’ll do. Precisely in the banal sense of how I’ll occupy myself, how I’ll fill up my days.

Necessities? Alas, I won’t have any, they’ve all been provided. For centuries humanity has labored with the sole intent of accumulating reserves. Food, drink, clothing. Fuel. Thanks to their work, I will not return to the animal—or Marxian—state, where the individual is entirely engaged in an effort to produce, and lives only to acquire the means to live. It was that animal state I was counting on, to avoid boredom and the so-called worm of doubt. Now I have no idea what to fall back on. Woe to him that is alone, (for there is no end to his toil)42: does the ancient curse now merely condemn me to forced leisure time? That would be odd. The successor’s plight is forced membership in a working man’s club?

I’m rambling. When I was eighteen, I took part in the usual youthful transgressions (dropping acid), and I was pretty sure that sooner or later I was going to end up in the madhouse. Another risk I no longer face. It’s not that a person is crazy, he or she is held to be crazy (or holds him or herself so) in relation to behavior different from his/her own. A point of comparison is needed, as when you want to establish whether someone is sexually manly or not. Adam didn’t think to himself, “I’m so manly,” because he had no point of comparison. By the same token, I cannot go crazy.

I’m rambling. I empty my bowels. I eat. I have postponed the visit to Alpa. I sleep again, two hours, no dreams. The day passes like this; outside it is snowing again. When I wake I feel comfortable. I move over to touch the radiators. They are hot. A thermostat has switched on deep in the heart of the Mayr; Providence (technology) exists and has come to my aid. I’d better atone; I regret my past skepticism, it’s offensive.

So well-being has arrived, finally, and relative security. Tomorrow I’ll go to Alpa. Now, it’s enough to get my strength back.

•

To get to Alpa, I’ll need a means of transportation. But I’m not going to drive the same compact car I always choose. I don’t want to get too close to their personal things.

I set out on foot. I have to climb almost 2,000 meters; the road snakes back and forth up the coldest and poorest slope of Widmad. My mountaineering instincts help me to locate and follow the shortcuts. I soon arrive at the roof of the valley, a roof of dark clouds knitted together.

I head into the clouds, meeting the shadows I left behind down below, and simultaneously remembering an obscure passage from the Apocalypse that the good Borges chose as the epigraph to one of his stories. It’s a strange thing to recall, timely too: as the end of the world approached, some people in search of salvation went to live in caves and grottoes in the mountains, went the story. This Apocalypse, and Borges with it, lend a timid confidence to the difficult road I’ve taken. I was tired before I left and have no support beyond my Spanish brandy and those scattered writings.

When I arrive it is, or seems to be, afternoon. Fresh snow blankets the shacks of the mining village. There’s a large hut of corrugated sheet metal where they crush the stone. A cable car station, a power transformer cabin, a dozen chalets. The settlement’s before me, but not the settlers; I see none. If I do see some, live ones, that will disprove the Apocalypse, and I’ll feel I’m a character in a book. The world will become a double world, flimsy and ambiguous like the symbolic ones Borges embroidered. But at least that despicable alternative will disappear. Me: chosen one, or outcast.

No one comes forward, though. On the mountainside a row of iron pylons leads up to the tunnel into the mountain. I explore a long stretch, keeping close to the rails of the narrow-gauge Decauville track. The tunnel is very hot, all the lights are on; I stumble over piles of tools on the ground, picks, hammers, shovels. Miner’s helmets with lamps. The people who were using them, wearing them on their heads, are not here. I’m about to turn back when a roll of