Sunday 20 July 2014

The Lyric of Marcel Pitti


I remember that day clearly for reasons I don’t remember right now. Perhaps it was the day the fever I got from my trekking trip, the one that seemed to crush my bones to a thousand pieces every time I breathed, finally left me. Yes, I remember sitting up in my bed letting the cool sweat of convalescence wash away last of the godforsaken viruses.

Soon I realized that I was thinking, unaware of course, about the class I was scheduled to take the next day. The realization broke my train of thought. But soon I got on with it, imagining in my mind a flow, cutting it into an infinity of small flowing shards, but each still big enough for the forces to act and react on them, to accelerate and decelerate them, just enough for the elegant curves of integration to round them up and join them, bit by bit, like the pieces of a demonic jigsaw, till the equation was formed. A deceptively simple, 3 inch long beauty. In my vanity I thought, I hoped, that someone would ask me what I was thinking. So that I could tell her that it was the Navier-Stokes equation. Her soft hand would then caress by unshaven cheek and I would feel her soft lips on my spine and I would hear a whisper in my ear pleading to tell her, to explain my thoughts. I would tell her that infinities couldn’t be explained, that the dx of calculus is just a poor imitation of the infinitesimal, that the seductive curves of integration were just cadavers of the uncountable. But she would insist and she would say, tell me darling, I don’t mind spending an eternity listening to you.

I looked behind me. The white sheets of my bed, in reality, terminated halfway, there wasn’t even enough space in my bed for me and my infinity girl. I sighed, looking at the colossal hard-on I had contracted, and reproached myself for being a cheesy romantic. We were all existentialists now, lost souls incapable of even conjuring illusions to sate our loneliness. I felt my heart turn, twisting the web of arteries, veins and nerves that held it in place, I wished my fever would come back and crush my bones to powder. The pain of bones is bliss compared to that momentary twist of the heart.

I got up and did what I always did at times like this. I put on a shirt and walked to Gringo’s.
Sometimes I doubt that my head just makes up all this loneliness shit so that I would have an excuse to go to Gringo’s. What a place it was on Sunday nights! Usually it was filled with grizzly construction workers and government officials too afraid to face their wives. But there were times, we called them windows, when the bohemian life of Quetzcal would flow into Gringo’s. It was as if they were there by some secret, unspoken of pact, an agreement that no one signed but every one acknowledged. And by the power of this nebulous pact poets, writers, and beautiful girls, who were neither but  beautiful, would sweep in to Gringo’s , there would be penny-less students arguing about Bolano and university professors trying to recapture and breathe in some of the youth from the air.

 But that Sunday was different. I was there earlier than usual, and Amelie who brought me beer after beer gave me one of those smiles. I sat there waiting for them to march in, with their loud chatter and shabby satchels, but more than anyone I was waiting for Marcel Pitti. Marcel Pitti was the star attraction of Gringo’s, his chest-thumping discourses on everything ranging from poetry to philosophy to the cheap food at Gringo’s were the commandments the gypsies of Gringo’s lived by. I had met him over a year back, drawn by his endless talk, which on that night had caught hold of the controversies of human evolution. Marcel Pitti said that socially desirable traits are not subject to refinement by natural selection, so there was nothing stopping the human race from being a bunch irritating fucktards, not even Darwin. I asked him some days later about what he had said that day, he didn’t remember any of it, the cannabinoids which were a constant presence in his blood stream prevented his brilliant ideas from entering his memory.

But Marcel Pitti didn’t turn up that day, nor did the rest of them. Unaware to me, along the main roads that were the jugulars of Quetzcal and the labyrinthine alleys that form the bronchi of its tremulous respirations, the writers, the poets, the penniless students and foul-mouthed whores, were being hunted, rounded up by a Government whose sole purpose was that. While I was losing myself in beers, outside there were cries, slogans and fizz of tear gas shells spewing thick white smoke. The university was locked down indefinitely for it was harboring criminals. For many weeks its gates were blocked by police barricades. Each of those passing days filled me with despair and loneliness. It seemed that every soul in Quetzcal capable of having an intelligent conversation had been locked up. Bored and lonely I went back to Gringo’s and stated smiling back at Amelie.

I asked about Marcel Pitti after 3 days. She was sitting on my bed a white sheet covering most of her body. I was expecting her to say that Marcel Pitti had been locked up.  He is writing a poem she said. I was going to say that he was always writing poems, but she sensed the obvious nature of her statement before I could say it. He is writing an infinite poem, she added, playing with my hair, I think he was on weed, she said as if talking to the walls. I wanted to kiss her and tell her that he always was on weed.  

I knocked on his door the next day and had to wait an abominable amount of time in his narrow hallway, which smelled like rotten meat, with only a flickering lamp at its other end to keep me company. Marcel Pitti soon emerged from a creak in his door and looked at me as if he knew me but did not recognize me. I understood that I did not exist outside the four walls of Gringo’s as far as he was concerned. After an eternity of staring his face lit up. Come in! Come in! he said. I followed him into his dimly lit room, books and belongings strewn around everywhere, clothes piled on a chair. I settled down on his creaky bed and he made room over his pile of laundry. We talked of course, surprisingly he had no knowledge of what was happening out in the streets. He just listened and nodded while I described the atrocities of the police. Something was amiss, in another place and time Marcel Pitti would have urged me on with profanities directed at their mothers, but now he just nodded. Finally I asked him, I heard you were writing an infinite poem, filling my voice with jest, trying to hide my admiration for his poem writing-dingy room existence. Who told you? He asked. Amelie. Marcel Pitti laughed, the laugh which always hung in the air back at Gringo’s, it seemed out of place in his room, you have been screwing her haven’t you?, he asked. I was surprised, Maybe… once or twice, I replied. He smiled at me again, I told her about it when we were having sex, so I just assumed that she would have told you about it when you were having sex with her, universe likes symmetry you see, Marcel Pitti said, he might as well have addressed me as ‘My dear Watson’.  Then he proceeded to tell me how the brain stores sex data separate from normal data, I nodded as always but in my head I was trying to remember whether I had used condoms with Amelie.
How is it going, the poem? I asked him, cutting him off. It is done, he said. Wouldn’t an infinite poem take an infinite amount of time? I asked him, perplexed, or trying to sound perplexed. Marcel Pitti’s voice rose like a condescending boom, Let me tell you something about infinite poems, I am not the first man to try and write one.
Gabriel Jeremy Munian tried to write one in 1873, said Marcel Pitti. Oh!, the ‘Gabriel Jeremy Munian’?! I asked. Yes, yes, THE Gabriel Jeremy Munian. He took the classical approach, line after line, paper after paper, but soon the poor guy found out that a truly infinite poem should be infinite in all dimensions as well as in time. Yes indeed, in space and time, I said. Marcel Pitti continued, so he started to make small glass cubes with letters engraved on each of their side, and he stacked them, making a poem lattice. A poem in three directions, a ballad from top to bottom, a series of sonnets from right to left, a Greek tragedy from back to front. Marcel Pitti was beaming, as if he was the poet of 3 dimensions and this very room was stacked with those glass cubes of obsession. I couldn’t mask my awe, the admiration a physicist felt for the abstract, things beyond practical. What then? I urged him. Well, there is a limit to the number of glass cubes you can stack one on top of another, they fell on top of him like a castle of cards, he died in that accident I believe, Marcel Pitti said.

Yes, then there was Omar bin Hafiz Sayeed Abullah, Marcel Pitti said with renewed enthusiasm. Let’s just call him Abdu, I quickly intervened, the last thing I wanted was to hear that chimeral name repeated again and again, for these lectures of Marcel Pitti can go on forever. I could see his head nodding in agreement in the dark. Ok so Abdu also thought about writing an infinite poem, hell he even composed one in his head!, said Marcel Pitti. Have you read it? I asked. Nobody has read it, Abdu argued that the finite thickness of the ink strokes and finite distance between letters could never justify his infinite poem, a true infinite poem can exist only in thought, Marcel Pitti replied, I could sense excitement building in his voice, his breaths stronger now, he was ready for his master stroke, to unveil his true infinite poem. Abdu said that an infinite poem could only exist in here, Marcel Pitti said pointing to his cranium.
But then you wrote an infinite poem, didn’t you? I asked him. Yes! Yes!, said Marcel Pitti, I’m surely the first person in history to write one. I don’t believe you! Show it to me, I pleaded.
Very well, came the reply. He reached for the switch and the room was flooded with light, and I saw the walls, the ceiling, and the window panes. Written on them were poems, sonnets, haikus, love songs, laments, in small hand, crawling over the boundaries of the room like a swarm of ants, dripping from the ceiling, going round and round with the fan blades. It’s amazing, I mumbled. Looking around the room in awe

Don’t be ridiculous! said Marcel Pitti. That’s not the infinite poem, those are just times I ran out of paper. Then his hand stretched out into the chaotic mess on top of his table and pulled out two sheets of paper. He held them one in each hand and grinned sheepishly through the vertical slot between them.
I did not understand what was going on, but I didn’t want to disappoint Marcel Pitti with my stupidity or tease his dormant lunacy with it. Fantastic! I must read it, I snatched one from his hands.

To see what you see
To hear what you hear
I yearn nothing more than to differ
To have stars of my own
To have places only I can go
To have a lonely universe
To be mad but at peace

It’s fantastic! I said, contrary to what I thought about the poem. Marcel Pitti clearly thought otherwise, he was already holding the second paper in front of my nose. I read that too
To see what you see
To hear what you hear
I yearn nothing more than to differ
To have stars of my own
To have places only I can go
To have a lonely universe
To be mad but at peace

I tried, but I could no longer hide my confusion, or maybe it was the terror of being with a mad man in a small room in the shittiest part of town. Whatever it was, my face gave it away. You don’t get it do you? Marcel Pitti asked. No, I said, I felt bad for disappointing him. But Marcel Pitti laughed at me, and it dawned on me that Marcel Pitti would love it if I didn’t understand it, for there was nothing he loved more than explaining his madness, and justifying it.
All those idiots!, infinity was so simple, it was right before them, said Marcel Pitti. What happened next was an hour long elucidation of his infinite poem, interspersed with condescending rambles and contemptuous remarks at his peers. Marcel Pitti’s infinite poem was two poems, one and same, a single poem repeated on two sheets in the most perfect way humanly possible. In the process of making an exact copy, Marcel Pitti believed that he not only copied it words, metaphors and mediocre ideas, but also its attribute of being copied. Since the original has a copy, Marcel Pitti argued (quite tediously in one hour) that copy should also have a copy, because well it was the perfect copy. The resulting copy of the copy should also have a copy, so on. So his poem was infinite, repeating, monotonous and its quality not enhanced by infinity, but still infinite.

I cannot say for sure what I felt that day, maybe it was the irritation of sitting in his stinking room listening to his condescending voice. Usually I just nod my head at whatever he says, but that day I felt like arguing, I felt like taking him down from his delusional perch. From this need came the idea and I wasted no time in telling him about it. No, it’s not truly infinite, I said cutting him off. What?  asked Marcel Pitti, he thought I was joking. Your poem is not infinite, because the repetitions are not perfect. However careful you are about it there will always be a first poem, a second poem, a third, a fourth and so on. This distinction will prevent a perfect repetition and stop the attribute of repetition from being copied, I said in one breath, with a clarity like a kill strike of a katana, never even in my countless lectures about concepts that were now second nature to me had I ever said something with such conviction and sharpness.
Marcel Pitti looked at me, his eyes were popping out of their sockets, his face pale, his entire skin shivering like a taught membrane struck by an unexpected blow. So an infinite poem should repeat also in time, if not the sequence of occurrence will betray the infinity, I said, maybe now smiling. Yes, maybe…yes.. ah.. yes.. perhaps, he was already pushing me out of his room. I will find a way to do it, you wait, he said, through the fast diminishing creak of his closing door, like an incantation to the gods of poetry. Once again I was out in his shitty hall way, but I felt good, I felt good for destroying his illusions, his infinity.

The city lulled into a trough of peace in the cycle of revolution that had been going on for much of the last century. But Marcel Pitti never turned up, we all asked each other but nobody knew. Nobody went to his address as far as I know, it is only natural, for at Quetzcal we knew that poems mattered not poets, that literature did not writers, they argued and abused and wrote and made love for only these things mattered, not the people who did them. Before my visit I used to think that Marcel Pitti mattered, now I know he doesn’t.

But deep down a feeling still haunts me, when I close my eyes in moments of tranquility, I see Marcel Pitti. I see Marcel Pitti, in a room with walls, with walls full of poetry. Trying his very best to make today exactly as the day before, to breathe in the same rhythm as he breathed yesterday, to write the same poems he wrote yesterday. Trying not to meet anyone, for it is impossible to meet the same people you met yesterday, or to meet the same people you are going to meet tomorrow. Eating the same food, drinking the same wine, thinking the same things at the same time as he had thought them yesterday. Living today like yesterday and tomorrow, in search of his infinite poem.

But still I feel that belligerence, the need to pat him on his shoulder and tell him that he was doing it wrong. That on dividing time into days he was losing out on the infinite. That he had to become more meticulous, he had to do in every infinitesimal instant of time the exact same thing he was doing the previous instant. To shatter him, to tell him that his poem like the dx of Newton or the ∫ of Leibnitz was just a poor imitation of the infinite.

 AJ


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