76. no more than a mindful moment

It seems a long time since Yov last met Yov. A bus squeezes by the window. Yov lives in London. The sun is bright and there are blossoms on trees. Yov clearly sees the commuters, but they rarely notice Yov typing away behind the window. A week has gone by since Yov met Yov and Yov wonders if Yov even existed in the meantime? Perhaps Yov only exists when Yov is here, typing, thinking, turning thoughts into language, words, phrases, then marks on a screen. Pixels change from white to black, light to darkness and a story continues, a life goes on, the life of Yov.

Yov is a sedentary creature.Yov used to venture out and return with stories. Now Yov tells only the story of Yov. Yov is private, solipsistic, misanthropic, ‘alone but not lonely’. Yov’s only companions are the words in which Yov dresses Yov’s self.

Yov is not afraid. Yov is not brave. Yov is unemotional. For Yov, emotions are dramas best avoided or set aside as soon as possible to enable a return to an unemotional state. This doesn’t mean Yov feels nothing. Yov feels the giving of the keyobaord under Yov’s fingers. It takes almost no effort at all to write in this way. Yov feels the pressure of one leg crossed over the other. Yov feels the delicate structure of Yov’s spectacles balanced on Yov’s nose. Yov feels the floor on which one foot is propped and the gradual loss of blood flow in one crossed leg, the wooden desk under the ball of Yov’s hands as they support themselves in fort of the keyboard enabling the individual fingers to do their work, reaching out across the keyboard, dancing and cycling across this little, limited number of signs, prescribed, pre-ordered, mechanised writing.

Yov hears the sounds of the street. Cars pass and workers call directions. Something rattles along a pavement. A child makes his way to school. Another car passes, a van, a bus. It is sunny. Yov hasn’t met Yov for a week but has nothing to tell Yov.

Yov wonders if Yov is still on a ‘journey’? Yov seems to have cancelled out the possibility of a journey by insisting on only writing about what is happening here as Yov is writing. Yov has done this many times before. And yet, it is compelling because it is a kind of ‘Trvth’, and Trvth is important to Yov. Can Yov mine value from no more than a mindful moment? If so or if not is Yov on a ‘journey’? Are journey’s essential to writing? Are stories? What is the story of now? What is a story deprived of time? Of extensity? Of duration?

Yov might change the title of Yov’s Blog again. This is not a journey. This is not a story. Is this even writing? Rather, mechanised writing often seems to be prescribed, to Yov.Muḥammad and Moses both received texts, instructions, guidance did they not, on what and how to inscribe. Today the computer, having usurped and incorporated the old Typewriter, perhaps limits and prescribes much of what Yov is likely to say. It certainly organises Yov’s words into straight lines, of such and such a width, height, font spacing etc.

There is of course a journey from week to week, from Friday to Friday (a kind of ‘religious’ day for Yov), and there are also journeys from the starts of sentences to their ends, and from the start of each post until its end, once 750 words is attained. There is a journey from the first Blog Post until this, the 76th. It became aware of itself as a journey at a certain point when Yov stopped taking journeys into the outside world and reporting back on them. The Blog became its own journey, but now it increasingly journeys only into and out of its own surface, scratching its own surface, its minimal depth, its skin.

There is an outside, a little bubble within the reach of the senses. A radio is playing a recording of an opera in another room. The sounds from the street persist. In another apartment a piece of furniture is perhaps being moved, or children are playing, bumping, banging. The legs need to uncross. The blood is not flowing sufficiently there. The wordcount says … “715” Yov is approaching the end of Yov’s post. The journey is over, for another week. Is Yov a journey? Will Yov recall next Friday who or what Yov is today? Why all the questions Yov? “750”.

Advertisement