Hi Hubert, I’m sure that I’ve written you recently but I don’t seem able to find my mail to you nor even your reply – perhaps I dreamed it? My dreams of late are truly strange.
No that’s not right!
I’m writing up notes not a mail to Hubert. It’s oddly symptomatic though that I lost it briefly there. I should have written these notes up a few days back when I had the original idea andor breakthrough but when I sat down I could not for the life of me remember what I was supposed to be doing let alone what I was supposed to be writing about. and I’ve been trying to get back to that place in my memory ever since. I’m losing it — or is it being taken from me? The more I think of it, and that’s getting to be more tricky daily, the more I’m convinced that the blight on my life intellectual in these last weeks is Lazheimer’s disease: designed and induced by that misbegotten monster Laz.
It’s not that I’ve forgotten … not as if some lacuna or hole has opened up in my memory banks … I know the memory is there … stored safely away … not lost … it’s more as though the problem is in the recall … I know it has the same end effect but … there is a difference … if it were gone that would be a different, less frustrating symptom but this constant tip of the tongue thing is a thing that fills me with a rage … I know that something is there that I must recall … and I cannot … as though someone had, momentarily built a ring road around a particular part of my existence … my existence only exists if I, or some someone else, can recall it … that is where immortality is possible …(where the fuck is this ellipsis thing coming from? – I don’t know) … the thing is there but when I move toward it the road I’m using runs around it … derailed … diverted … (Celine?) … so what I’ve been doing is to sneak up on these memories … stealth in recall is called for though how to do it? … I have devised ways of appearing to head toward A when I’m really targetting Y … seems to work … how I got here … where? … yes OMNIUM.
It was writing to Hubert that brought it back to me. Selby, de Selby, Omnium, Lawn Mower – it all fell into place – like a chinese box rather than a jigsaw – like a clearing piece in Tetris. Omnium is the substance that grants de Selby omnipotence in the Dalkey Archive (or is it the Third Policeman? At Swim Two Birds? … I could look it up but I can’t think where Flann is filed) and that is what is inscribed on one of those boxes on the Laz’s desk … brass plaque worn and fingered smooth but that is what it said … I know it. Know it and must not let them now I know. Trace tells me that DD is still trying to get in she sees his efforts and thwarts him diurnally. They must not know – hence this obscure entry. But it is the OMNIUM that will be his downfall … now I know and know that they know not. It is the core of his power and will be mine! We move toward a death … HIS. I will obliterate him. I shall wipe all trace of him from literary history. I shall, if I must, drill his gunsel and I shall hoist that comic black face by his own jolly roger – bandana and all.
Merdre – I forgot to put it behind the bookshelves and left it in clear view for a while – for Turing’s sake I hope DD didn’t see it.
(to be continued … )
