Stunned by your words I have to write

True, but not right: About our exclusion from the settlement, or, for that matter, the non-arrival of our invitations to join the “do” at Westminster Abbey this coming April, those thugs as you call them, the men and women in loose fitting dark suits who keep on raising their hands to press their electronic earpieces deeper into their ears so they can hear their instructions over all the whooping and blaring music coming from the party on the other side of the razor wire barrier, instructions which are coming from above we assume, or, perhaps it is below, because in these confusing times it is hard to know where the headquarters are these days, in their heads or in their balls, either way the security men make it easy for us to understand.

- Move on now, unless you want a good kicking, in the name the Muammar, or something worse.

- You are not on the party list, another one says, Get lost.

So we shuffle on, but Immy, who is a kind of shape-sfifter, has had time to squeeze under the razor wire and fill his pockets with some of the food off the nearest table, not exactly groaning dishes, you know the CUTS and even the caviar is in short supply these days, and later when we inspect the contents of Immy’s pockets, we find ‘cookies’ mostly, all with different icing colours and faces painted on them, Look there is Pinky, and Perky, And there is Ozzy and Olly, but they all taste the same, all equally saccharine.

Judith’s eyes are flashing with a pure rage – My God she looks beautiful! – and Uncle Wally is taking a small box out of his black leather portmanteau which never leaves his side – Crikey ! I think, we shouldn’t be on the streets at this time of night, we shouldn’t be here at all, my failure of nerve, and it is into us that Judith’s coal red eyes are burning rather than into the security guards.

- Here take these, she says grabbing two devices out of Uncle Wally’s box. We disentangle what appear to be two head torches with elastic to fit round the head, Put them on, she says, so we do, and then with a flick of her fingers she switches them both on.

-Wow! We both say, it is strange experience being made to disappear just like that, like a cloak of invisibility descending over us, but we are not Hogwart students and this isn’t the Matrix, only the sensation, decidedly odd, that “I” am not here (and nor are you, only a shape like a thick woollen hat pulled down over your head and hiding your eyes) and a slight nausea.

- I am not here, I say with my non-existent lips, but the words seem to be coming from somewhere, What is happening, You are wearing a Telesphorus, Judith says, What’s that, we both ask together, It is a ‘far-seeing’ device, she says, and we watch in amazement as the inverted commas of her voice spin and hang like fireflies in the air.

- Grovvy! We say in unison.

- Look, I say, and we turn our singular but impersonal selves, or impersonally singular selves depending on the point of view, to look back at the brightly lit settlement. All is as before, the party is in full swing, You can go in, Judith says, How come, I ask, You have agency now, go on, try it.

I slowly walk back up to the group of security guards, I don’t think I want to but like in a bad dream I can’t stop myself, and remarkably their faces break into obsequious smiles, Saudarde! One says to me, Saudarde! I reply my knees knocking, Good evening sir, another one says ticking a name on a clipboard he is holding while his companion lifts the razor wire to one side, and then stands aside to usher me in.

You follow close behind, and I almost scream as you give a cocky wave to one of the thugs. My God, I think, we have become undercover agents!

Having left the last city so long ago, months if not years as it seems – it is hard to recall – first the flat unrelenting geography along the expressway out to the last exits and then out over the long dusty plains, there are maps for where we have been, and now these first foothills, it is not ‘terra incognita’, but they are not the kind of maps that are much help to us for the regular shifts of scene and site, as we continue to head for those snow capped peaks ahead, which stretch both north and south to the horizons on either side of us.

Andes? Or Himalayas? It matters less to us than you might think.

Crack! Crack! The whip. Yes, Immanuel, it is him who is constantly getting it across his back from her, that Judith lass, and also the quick lashings from her tongue, and fortunately so far not us, we have been lucky perhaps, or more a question of simply keeping our heads down, but frankly we couldn’t have begun to get this far without him, one of the great unsung.

Shout “I” for Immanuel! Hurray!

Admittedly he is not your usual kind of hero, frankly obscenely ugly and a political bore, but a true Trojan nonetheless, the loads he carries are quite astonishing, nearly our entire luggage, and then all of Judith’s books too, and the entire archive of Uncle Walter – Can you imagine the weight? – as well as all the cooking and camping equipment, cookers, tents, and so on, and the whole rest of the paraphernalia required these days for modern Sat-Nav living. While we complain of a sore bum and the occasional blister, I tell you, it is humbling and not a little embarrassing. And there are the scrapes he gets us out of, the wolves he saw off the other night, and remember the bandits that other time.

There is the thought that one day perhaps we will find ourselves sitting in armchairs somewhere reminiscing gently together about all this, but, No, right now we cant – we daren’t – let that idea intrude for a moment. Simply on – and all our attention needed for the path beside the yawning crevasses and shadowy gullies, those terrible gaps with their endless, plunging questions (such as those “Complex Questions from Russia” and so on, and so on). Simply on - Across Patagonia, Or is it across the Hindu Kush, No, we are not lost, and it is worth repeating the actual name of the plateau we crossed last week does not concern us too much here and now. Simply on – And early to bed, because tomorrow promises to be another long hard day in the saddle.

These last few days I have been, and for the time being am required to remain, in a condition caught between blindness and seeing, in imitation perhaps of Saramago’s two famous novels which were given those words as titles in their English translations, about which, although over the years these two books have sold many copies and been very highly praised in the Anglophone world, he never gave up his protest against their shortened, and, to him, misleading titles in English; these works, Saramago always insisted, although grounded in the tradition of the novel, were essays – ensiaon – not simply fictions.

Between blindness and seeing, in imitation of the sudden onset of a mysterious trauma and interruption of everyday life, such as was described in those two works by Saramago, when on last Saturday afternoon the main telecom cable which serves the valley in the west country, within which this ‘writing desk’ is located and from where every one of these words is constrained to flow, was violently severed, abruptly cutting off nearly all the telephone, email and internet communications with the outside world of those living in the valley, including myself here.

A sudden blindness descending upon us and continuing, so that I was forced to use whatever remained of my powers of recollection of the world that went before, including for instance the account given by my friend last week below, and then to reach out again and again into this new, unfamiliar and disabling dark in repeated attempts – ensiaon – to make a moment of contact with the outstretched hand of an other. Even her hand, and then asking, Is this still her? Are you that Judith Butler who was described before? Is this her touch, and are these – and, now I remember, must the texture of her clothes still be leather – her self-same words?

Or can I postpone the notion that accompanies, and had for so long become the habit of my seeing mind, Oh, now I know who you are, it spoke, disturbing and doing violence to, and with, the reach of my desires? Then, as I recalled other incidents from the just past, I also remembered that she too, equally not knowing within this darkness, had been feeling towards me, and this is what she had said in what seemed to be an extended continental mode of address, and towards our being “addressed” together in a way that did not result in a violence either of the body or mind, including the risk of falling for the texture of and scent upon her clothes, and the possibility at any moment of reaching too far.

It has proved fruitful enough to attempt to explore – ensiaon – thus far, and now there is the further novelistic task to find a sufficient and imaginative way for these words to reach out themselves in order to be seen and read in the world… Next week I am away, I had planned it some time ago, which is now framed by this recent and unexpected turn of events, and account of blindness and seeing… And when I return, will the people of Egypt and elsewhere also have come through their time of darkness, and will they too have found and collectively reached a way of being “addressed” without violence?