Anyway, W. says, there are three types of conic section: hyperbolic, parabolic and the other one — it isn’t anything-bolic, it’s just normal. — ‘I think that’s what it’s called: normal’, W. says. ‘Anyway, which one are you: hyperbolic or parabolic? Do you view yourself as a hyperbolic man or a parabolic man?’
Sometimes, W. dreams we will become mathematical thinkers, I the philosopher of infinitesimal calculus, he the philosopher of conic sections.
Mathematics is the organon, says W. pedagogically. Do you know what organon means? He didn’t know himself, W. says. It comes from Aristotle, and refers to an overall conceptual system — the categories and so on.
W. is growing increasingly certain that the route to religion is a mathematical one. Maths, that’s what it’s all about. Take Cohen, for example. And Rosenzweig. Of course no one can understand Rosenzweig on mathematics and religion, W. says.
For his part, W.’s been reading his Hebrew Bible again, and wondering how to mathematise it. He’s quite serious, he says. He is currently in an email exchange on the topic with one of his cleverer friends, he says.
The infinitesimally small is not a concept of thought, but of science, and the science of magnitudes, Groessen. But does not the idea of magnitude presuppose intuition? Thus there appears to be a contradiction between thought and intuition. How can the infinitesimal be a magnitude and at the same time not an intuition?
W. says he’s since discovered that Groessen, in the last paragraph, can also be translated dimension. He’s not sure what the implications of that might be, though.
Has he had a thought over the weekend? I ask W. No, he says, not one. He never thinks when he’s with me. But I think sometimes, W. notes, sometimes I’m capable of thought. There’s sometimes a parting of the clouds, it’s amazing. For a few minutes, I make sense, I speak clearly and thoughtfully, and everyone is amazed. Sal was impressed at Oxford, says W., remembering our conversation in the beer garden. Ah yes, the beer garden, I say, a moment of illumination.
The problem is that I fear time, W. has decided. I have no stretches of empty time in my day. W., by contrast, always allows for empty time in his day. When he eats, he eats, he doesn’t work. When I eat, by contrast, it is in front of the computer screen, crumbs dropping between the keys. — ‘What time do you get up?’, says W., wanting to be taken through my work day. At six o’clock, I tell him. He gets up at four, he says, sometimes earlier. I got up at five yesterday, I tell him. — ‘And what did you do?’ I wrote, I tell him. — ‘But did you think?’, W. asks. ‘You can’t think and write’.
Yes, my problem is that I fear empty time, W. is sure of it. Does he fear it? No, he says, but then his house is nicer than my flat. And his living room walls aren’t pink. — ‘What were you thinking when you painted those walls?’ It was to bring out the colour of the wood, I tell him. Pink, though! Why pink? It would depress him, says W.
‘So what are you going to do about your leak?’, says W. I show him the kitchen. The dehumidifiers, working twenty-four hours a day, are sucking out the damp. They fill up every twelve hours. — ‘That’s a lot of water’, says W. ‘Where does it come from?’ No one knows, I tell him. The greatest experts on damp are completely baffled.
W. wants to understand me, he says. He’s decided to list my affects. You can do it for any living thing, he says. A tick, for example, responds to heat and warmth. — ‘It’s a very simple being. Like you. You’re simple’.
‘We’ll start with the living room’, he says. Am I taking notes? I’m writing on a post-it pad. — ‘It’s cold’, he says. ‘Write that down. I’m freezing. How can you live like this? And it’s dark’, he says. ‘There’s no light. I can’t see anything. And it’s damp. That’s another affect’. It’s better than it was, I tell him.
Why am I always putting vaseline on my lips? W. wonders. — ‘Vaseline’, he says, that’s another of your affects. The internet. That’s what scholarship is for you, isn’t it? How can you go on reading that bilge? You’ve got no honour. No shame. No goodness’.
W. looks out of the window at the rotting plants in the yard. — ‘Horror. That’s your other affect, isn’t it? Look at it out there. It’s shit. How can you live like this?’
W. is delineating the basic categories, he says. — ‘Television. You like TV, don’t you?’, says W. I tell him I don’t watch it that much. — ‘I’m not surprised. The remote is broken. How can you watch anything?’
‘So what else do you do? Are there any affects for you in the bathroom?’ I’m indifferent to the bathroom, I tell him. — ‘What do you think about when you’re in there?’ Nothing, I tell him. You, I tell him, and he laughs.
‘Well then, your bedroom. Is that where you do your reading? You don’t really read anything, do you? You don’t read. And what about the kitchen? Those stacks of tinned fish. You eat the same thing every day, don’t you? Exactly the same thing!’ W. is a believer in a varied diet, he says. — ‘I try to vary what I eat. Not like you’.
W. concludes he has a larger range of affects than me. He lives with someone. That’s what does it. — ‘Otherwise I’d be a sad fucker like you’. Of course W.’s house is much nicer, he points out. It’s not cold, for one thing. Or dark. Or damp.
The previous owners dug right down to the foundations to get rid of the damp, W. tells me. They put down a layer of plastic sheeting, then a layer of concrete, then another layer of sheeting, all the way up. — ‘It’s dry as a bone’, W. says.
W.’s tired of listing my affects. How many have we got? Eight general categories, I tell him. He looks around. — ‘Oh fuck it, that will do’.
W. feels ill from all the drinking, he says. Last night, we had a bottle of red wine, then beer, then we drank Tequila from the bottle. Then we finished off the bottle of Plymouth Gin, then a bottle of Cava and then a bottle of Chablis. It was a good Chablis, wasn’t it? W. says he was in no position to appreciate it. He wants some aspirin, he says. — ‘And how are you feeling?’, he asks me. Fine, I tell him. Better than usual. — ‘Any thoughts?’ Not one.
We head out to the coast for the day, and eat fish and chips on the Fish Quay. We wander through the deserted markets. It’s a melancholy sight. There’s a special kind of melancholy to the quayside, W. and I agree. What is it? The sense that it’s all over, it’s all finished, and a whole civilisation has come to an end, which in fact it has.
We watch the big seagulls strutting about, and the pigeons. — ‘What do you feel about pigeons?’, W. asks me. The Romans brought them to England to eat. They crowd on his window ledge every morning, W. says, cooing and flapping their wings. What miserable birds! He prefers the seagulls, of course. They remind him of the sea, he says, and he loves the sea.
On one side of us, the Tyne broadens as it reaches its end; on the other, a passenger ferry at the dock, ready to disembark for Norway. Should we go to Norway? W, wonders. Would they make sense of us there?
‘Your problem is that you fear empty time’, says W. as we head back to the city. ‘That’s why you don’t think’. And then: ‘Thought must come as a surprise, when you least expect it’.
Thought, when it comes, always surprises him, says W. But he’s ready with his notebook, he says, which he keeps in his man bag. That’s why I need a man bag, he says, in case thought surprises me. But I fear the empty time which makes thought possible, says W., so I don’t need a man bag.