The first thing I saw, the first thing I really saw, after I had had a moment to adjust my looking to everything I was seeing, was the udder of the great Holstein and the thin arc of milk expelling itself from one of her teats. Only then did I see her dangling head, the void surrounding her spine, and the blood draining from that void. Beyond that, there were men with knives doing a job, doing their jobs, and another man with an innocuous-seeming device which he used in a manner not dissimilar from the way a police detective uses arrest—as a formality at the end of a longer, secretive process carried out in doorways and on small slips of paper.
vs.
But there is a burden which will need to be shed, and that burden is named Robert. And Robert, though immensely small (small and still, a perfectly spherical zero) is also immensely heavy.
He took a walk. When people don’t have signs or other external cues for direction, they will probably end up walking in circles. Robert walked a circle with every step and still managed to get somewhere and not just the madhouse. (We don’t say “madhouse” anymore.) He took a walk and then he sat down. He sat down and then he made chicken scratches all over the back of a receipt for a cup of coffee and a peach muffin. Those chicken scratches became this story. (But this isn’t a story. (And Robert isn’t writing it.))
He took a walk. You might well ask where he took it. All right then, he went for a walk. He put one foot in front of the other. He compelled himself forward. He was walking. And he didn’t always realize it, but he was always falling. With each step he fell forward slightly. And then caught himself from falling. Over and over, you’re falling. And then catching yourself from falling. And this is how he could be walking and falling at the same time.
That is not, perhaps, the circle you were thinking of. He took a walk (that construction again!). Then he took a bow (ah, that’s why! (but it’s still not quite right . . . )). He went for a walk. He bowed. He bowed deeply, modestly, with sincere humility, but he also showed some pride in his bow because he knew how to bow, and he knew how to do it well. Robert did not bow when he was walking. (Well, once, at the very end, but I’m trying to avoid including biographical facts. They fit too nicely.) He did not bow when he made his pencil marks (what I have previously and unfairly referred to as “chicken scratches”). But, of course, his markings and his ramblings were made up almost entirely of a constant, circular bowing. Which is, of course, exactly how one makes a small, still, perfectly spherical zero.
He wanted to be smaller, to be small. It is irrelevant whether or not he achieved this goal. (Is it?) He certainly achieved a deep silence, but that’s once again uncomfortably close to biographical detail.
Oh look! But here! His mother suffered depression! One brother ended his own life! One brother’s life ended in an asylum (where Robert also lived, later)! He walked miles every day! His handwriting got smaller and smaller! He couldn’t live a normal life! He ended up in an asylum! He said, “I’m not here to write. I’m here to be mad”! He died on a walk, in the snow, on Christmas Day! These things, if correctly marshaled, must explain all 26 volumes of text! (But they don’t. And they can’t. And I’m not entirely sure the small, still, perfectly spherical zero can, either.)
Perhaps only the text can explain the text. (What difference does it make, motherfucker?)
