a) b) c) d) e) & f)

Covered in the dust of dry-wipe markers, I have come round to find that the content of my thoughts has been deleted. The memory of our movement together remains, written as it is in permanent marker, but the precise nature of the ingredients has been erased. A gust of wind resulted in all items being lost, and the diagram has neglected to retain any indication of substance.

You would be invited, for example, to the after party. The space is covered so that I can’t see the shit for the shit and I get nauseous. I recall that there is a tiny space behind one of the walls that ends in nothing. The clarity of the situation dimming from the periphery, so that as I grab out to hold, that which I had previously known so firmly becomes impossible. The room spinning, my elbows buckling, and the floor rising up to meet my face.

You can replace something if something is lost.

But now, upon waking, just this: An indistinguishable mass of fluff or lump or whatever we call stuff. Scribbles, a homogenous dough pressed into shape, the same diagram every fucker else has ever swept through to find themselves lost and clueless as to how they got here.

Note to self: Remember this: This pre-sleep perfect sentence - which is sure to stay in view considering its genius, its capacity to bring all elements into harmonious and exhilarating contact; Dissolved the moment your lids drop.

I’m left with a system endlessly quoting itself in a secret language I have forgotten the code for; I stand in the centre of the room, glamorously telling a lie I have forgotten the crucial convincing details of. All that is left is only an expression of our longing, fingerprints, evidence of now inconsequential epiphanies, the suggestion of iridescence offered in a smooth white surface. I have a fading memory of the endless folding of this into that, of if-this-then-that, of if-that-then-necessarily, the feeling of falling, incandescent into place; greedy for the taste of my own incredible intellectual athleticism.

I have begun the process of trying to remember the steps I took that lead to the insights which these lines scaffold; A process of labelling the labelling.

I reach an almost, only to realise that if this, then a whole category is useless, and a rising frustration at the fact that I know, like a cake, you have only this many ingredients and you don’t need to add another because it won’t make a better cake. These are the ingredients, a to f, of the show; 6. 6 they are. It was kind of a practical thing, I don’t remember, but there was a reason, why I was particularly happy with them being 6; It has something to do with the pages in the book.

Tess Denman-Cleaver