The Doge of Venice, to his Foxy Steward: (tenebre) They tell me Venice is sinking. Well may they say so. It is written in Isaiah, little Ispuci, that our sins will be cast to the bottom of the ocean. And Venice will sink to join them with her deepest blood, the reddest spent since Eden. And then well may we say -

Is this the bolt of misery
That was fired like a dart
Through that wild dilated iris called the heart?

The Foxy Steward, aside: Well may they say so, sir, and you keep aboard this sinking ship of floating stone. But I will be long disembarked, by then, and ever since you first embarked upon my body, I have dreamt of nothing but fleeing like a rat. (To the doge:) Of course, my lord. Of course it is.

Doge: What is?

Steward: Your eyes, my lord. They dilate, limp as wine.

Doge: (blurring, falls on his steward's bosom) Ahhh, no...

No.

Reading, I have moved my eyes through forests of words
Speaking, I have moved my words through forests of eyes.

Folloydilloday, in the library, on the stage.

turned out, with the coogee-resident physio working on petersham park i saw yesterday, that i have sprained my ankle and done something to some ligament. she put some ultrasound machine and a bandage on it. i'm allowed to walk around, in fact, she said it might help. that surprised me. she said not to worry about the clicky clicky noises. so i won't.

in the room where k and i are sleeping here, theres a large framed photo on the wall of a patient's feet being covered over with a hospital sheet by a doctor. i wish i could turn it around to face the wall.

we havent seen the cat for a few days now, i'm getting concerned. the last i saw of it was a pile of half-dried vomit under the table. i can't think what i've done wrong. i've never had a cat, maybe they just dissapear sometimes.

stayed up with k last night on the absolut and diet melon and tv became unbearable, because - we both felt - everything was going way way too fast for us to follow, and so we put a DVD on 1/4 speed, and it was much much better, beautiful, slow spanning pan, pornographic, the way life should be.

the microwave clock, its battery flat, gradually decides that it is midnight.

PS, on that note. Reminds me of the brilliant slogan Holden made up in Melbourne. 'Winston is watching you.' That has to be a t-shirt.

Here’s my vision for the next 1940s style sociological novel, along Orwellian or Bradburian lines. This time they are not trying to abolish books, language, free thought. They’re trying to abolish time. You see, the fountain of youth has been discovered – and everyone has to take this little handful of government-provided pills every day, to make sure that they don’t age. The pills, essentially, mean you are immortal. Every disease, every cause of death, has its cure. And not only that, but technology has become so advanced that every natural, geographical, or even astronomical catastrophe (the explosion of stars, asteroids, the next big bang) can be averted, rerouted. An eternity is open to everybody. The pills also make you infertile, as the population has reached the perfect sustainable rate, and any more children will interrupt the balance. Clocks, calendars, are broken and burned. However, the huge police and anti-ageing enforcement force soon discovers that there are people who have been secretly failing to take their pills – washing them down basins, putting them in bins. There are regular check-ups, and they cannot always avoid taking their pills, but on the odd day they manage it, and there are some very successful ‘time-junkies’ (as they are known) who have managed to age five years or so in the last ten. There are even certain pockets or ‘sects’ of old women, who have managed to approach death. They are interfering with the government’s attempt to abolish time, and change, because they are producing a counter-culture of aging, of mortality. It becomes very difficult for the government to stick to its slogans, and the government (of course) cannot punish these people corporally or capitally because this would run against its policy of abolishing mortality and physical degeneration. And so, by quietly dying behind closed doors, these people manage to thwart the would-be totalitarian government.
Because absolute, paralytic stasis is the only kind of perfect, complete control.

This cannot be achieved. Instead, the world ages fractionally, partially – and most people live forever in a system that is eternally oppressive but eternally incomplete.

(How unsatisfying for everyone involved).

[This appeals to me, because it creates the conditions in which everyone can adjust to the idea of their own morality by realise the horror of the alternatives. Immortality is a blank white nightmare.]