The cold night wind is blasting across the pampas, the horses are tethered, and, huddled around a camp-fire beside the Dust-Poet and his bulging saddle-bags, there is the impossibility of saying it directly, of standing up and declaring loudly in soap-box style, See here you – Listen to Me!
What a ridiculous proposition this is within the context of our circumstances, aside from a certain intrinsic jokey quality, because the words don’t last a second, violently dragged away from our mouths, and lost in the screeching wind.
For instance, last week la Fiebre Amarilla knocked me off my feet, the yellow jack that is endemic in these parts and this time of year, fever, pain, nausea but thankfully no black vomit, and I composed and sent a letter to the Chairman of the Policy Review Department about the proposed NHS health reforms, which, in my delirium, I crazily supposed as a self-redundant ex-GP doctor I should stand up and speak out about; “It will be a disas-s-ter!” – I began before continuing – as the Strictly Come Dancing judge said of the Right Honourable lady competitor, who spoke all the best lines, but whose performing capabilities were simply not fit for purpose. And so on… two whole pages in the same vein.
Another absurdity. No, we have both learnt, and at the cost of black eyes, bruises and several broken bones over the years, this sort of approach does not get us very far. But still on the occasions when we are febril, a madness comes over us, which, more often than not, we are unable to withstand, actually an intoxication, an unstoppable desire which we are unwilling to cede, and, we cannot help ourselves, out the words pour.
Put another way, it is the nature of what we encounter and meet in the wilderness that we are being constantly called upon to give an account of ourselves*.
* I am being encouraged to this thought through my reading of Giving an Account of Ourselves by Judith Butler (New York 2005), early on coming across this quotation – “We begin with a response, a question that answers to a noise, and we do it in the dark – doing without exactly knowing, making do with speaking. Who’s there, or here, and who’s gone” (Thomas Keenan, Fables of Responsibility).