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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