A.

We fossick together.
We explore and stumble and get confused and sometimes we lose our way.
That is what happens in silence, after all.
And that is what this is about.

As if we are there together. As if in confronting the hoard we can put words to the silence.
But it was more than that wasn't it?
We need more than words. Well I do anyway.
I somehow think that I could do with a story or two. No, even that is not quite right.
No, this is about difference, about gaps, zones that are not congruent, one with the other.
As if there are life zones that ought to mesh, to flow into each other but just do not do that.
So I am left wondering if there is a translation problem here. Do you know what I mean?
It is not so much about silence and secrets but about difference so marked that what was before just gets dumped. Not hived off but sequestered, as if you Mama split off something and just removed it. Now you see it, now you don't.

I am linking poetics to reverse engineering. If there is nothing there then I need to imagine an overabundance and then work out how to navigate through that.
But I do not know the rules.

So often Mother would say that there was nothing there. Nothing to tell.
Hankering after a narrative that had disappeared. It was there once.
As if without it motivation would not have made sense. See how important the past tense is there.
It's true isn't it?
Wanting stands out against something else. Without that else it makes no sense. Is it the same for silence?
Does silence stand out against what is inferred, imagined, presupposed? Mama wants me to think of silence as nothingness.
Well, of course, and so I have or rather had the need to fill in the void, do away with this nothing, try to put words into absence and try to fill in a space with stuff.
-Ronnie there is so much stuff here, we really need to get rid of most of it.
And is that how we treat the non-living?
No, we need to stick around a bit longer. We need to process this process; I mean what on earth is going on here?
If nothing is excluded then silence and the void and nothingness and emptiness are all part of the hoard.
-You mean there is no outside?
-No, I do not mean that. What is outside is what was not part of your life, or memory, or imagination.
-Poetics?
-This is about what is against the grain, resistant to being memorialised, somehow wanting to be forgotten. Silence and secrets and shame and the mundane are all linked here. And of course something else that needs to be explored and it too is resistant.
-What is that Ronnie?
-It is you, as mother, for that is also part of the archive. In fact it is core. There is so to speak in this hoard of silence and forgotten memories a maternal archive; yes, an entanglement of affects and different registers of feelings and sounds and smells. It is not so much that they make up you as they are part of us.
I am aware of moving away from that so easily-
As if there is something more important that is recognised as part of the world of theory, cerebral and so not demotic. And I have to, bring myself back to how what was between us, what constituted us had gaps that make me think of translation gone wrong.
That is not quite right.
-What do you mean?
-Back to zones. Segments. Parts. Aspects. Worlds. You give birth to me and you start a new life, as do I. And yet this zone, this part is severed from what went before. This something is in a different space to one that you previously inhabited and it involves a different language with different values and customs. Some people bridge these differences, they accommodate.  them in one way or another. But you banish the space you were part of previously and it then was as if it never existed.
All of this becomes part of the hoard.
As if the way to deal with the gaps and silence is to fill up what was missing and to continue doing that until.
-Until when?
-I do not know. Maybe until I know what I am looking for.

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B.

-Why poetics? Or rather how poetics?
-Well, in the wake of nothing, something has to be imagined.
-And then what?
-After something then something else, and in this process the two somethings become linked, as do more imagined phenomena as they too are posited in the archive.
The how is a function of imagining. That the filling in of an empty space is done through the constitutive power of language and, of course, the imagination. But all of this is fluid. Patterns  are created and then change as more stuff is accumulated. But whatever is there is part of your memory bank and maybe what is needed is some way of allowing resonance to be shaped, by what is there and by you or indeed us.
-I wanted to forget about all of this. Maybe not all but a lot.
Hiving off, separating, cleansing and then supposing that what has been expunged or extruded just no longer exists. But surely not? Is there not a part that still contains these fragments? And if we gently, very gently, moved toward what seems to have been disowned then just possibly something profound would happen. Would it shatter the silence? Too much noise? If so then we withdraw. Both of us. But the damage is done.
You know I wonder if this is reestablishing something.
-What?
-How close together can we be; and I wanted to write 'become'. For this is a bit like wanting to get so close that I perceive what you have split off. But what would I see? What sounds does it make? Maybe I have seen it or heard it without knowing.
I remember that look, your face reddening suddenly and then a very quick change of subject.
Words spoken and at the same time silence. They can co-habit. But which is which?
I remember the first time I noticed something that was different. I felt it, and I do not know where.
I think now that you were ashamed of something but I have no idea what it was; except, yes there is a but here, for what I noticed was how hard you tried.
You see, the trying went with wanting something to be hidden. For a long time I guessed that you wanted your Jewishness to be concealed. And for the most part you succeeded.
But now I think there was more to it than that.
-What more?
-I think this is where the hoard becomes enlightening. It is all there. If only we looked the first time then we would have known. And we missed it as the stuff, the clutter accumulated. And then there was or rather is so much there that we might miss it again. And then the problem is whether we take stuff away or add more to the pile.
However, as so often, it is neither. It is not a case of more or less but of tarrying, drifting along or meandering through and around and inside and above and below. Not at the same time of course. It is a case of fashioning a path that allows for alloyed attention and perception. Different paths give rise to different narratives and ultimately we choose.
-What do we choose? Or rather how do we make the choice?
-We choose what fits. What makes sense in the moment. What answers our or my need.
-Ronnie what is your need?
-Something that makes sense, that temporarily closes a loop; so that to exit that path we have to retrace our steps.

There is a problem here and it has to do with being close and distant at the same time. If we share a space in some symmetrical way then I just see what you see, and something that is out of awareness is not proximate for me. It can not be. So I cry out for a part that is beyond and so clearly in a foreign language and for sure needs to be translated. And then we drift apart for there is no joint experience. Something happened that you did not foresee. I felt that for you co-existence involved absolute congruence and if that were not so then something had gone dreadfully wrong.
As if some template was inexact. And the other was wrong. Yes Mama, you thought it was my fault. And I think there was always at play a dance of moving towards and moving away. Now it is different, at least for the moment. For if we move away from each other too much, we shall lose the thread that each of us holds. 

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C.

If that breaks then so will this. So, I shall at the very least keep holding on until.
-Until when? Or what?
As if there is a time or moment when holding on is no longer necessary. Is that the way it works?
I think so, though it is difficult to put into words that moment. For, it seems, there is going to be a moment, an event, that will actually end the need for all of this.
-You mean that these objects, these things will at some point cease to have any function?
-I am not sure about that. I somehow think that may not happen. Once put out there they remain, even in the abstract, as a resistance to the nothing that existed before. Or even as a provocation to silence that seems to gather to itself more and more authority. That stuff demands of silence a momentary reprieve from not just quiet but from the refusal to put into words what might stir up trouble.
It's a process, and as such there is no closure as in an answer to a question that settles something.
The silence throughout and the idea that there was no before us, nothing anterior to us and Papa, is suggestive of something broken and the idea that whatever that was should be forgotten. Yes, toss it away as then we don't have to think about it.
But you see the issue is that occasionally, yes really not often, something was exuded, and it always added to the muddle.
Something was broken, and I suppose that whatever path we choose to move through the hoard will create a different pattern. My image is of a Kaleidoscope, and however much it is shaken the pattern created is never broken. Or so it seems.
And so our movement here is a way of establishing a regime of repair.
-Why repair?
-For something has been broken. Nothing in particular but processes and thoughts. Not particular thought, but thoughts nonetheless, and ones that are, I think, linked to feelings and memories.
-But in what way have these things been broken?
-They have been shattered and fragmented and above all left to fend for themselves, but in that process they more or less stay incomplete, lonely and forgotten. They are here too and they wait to be included in your story, no matter what part they play. For now whether they are in the story you tell or not they have their place. It is as if once here then they remain and can settle, as there is always the possibility of their being characters in a different tale.
-But Ronnie, I still do not understand this idea of repair. Am I broken? Are we in bits?
I think sometimes what seems almost impossible and even dangerous is what is counterintuitive.
It is simple and even obvious but felt as too hard and always there is the fear of shame.
-Shame?
-Yes, as if there is an admission then something terrible will prevail. And this seems to come from the inside and the outside simultaneously. The result is the desire to disappear and for people, the imagined onlookers to divert their gaze so that one can momentarily survive. Yet these feelings stay, remain as signs to ensure that something not happen again. But it always does.
What is missing is what is obvious, so much so that reparative behavior is dependent on it. Do you remember how you were never able to acknowledge certain feelings even though to me it seemed as if you were experiencing so deeply what you could not, or would not, articulate.
It is as if you were carrying a silence inside that acted as a boundary, a barrier to allowing something out.
We are drifting her not quite knowing where we will go next and what we will uncover in our hoard, and that, I suppose, is allowing something to happen without any idea of how what we discover will impact us. I always had the sense that you would not allow that level of unstructure lest, yet again, those intermittent negative experience would confront you and then we would have to pay for that.
As if deep down, yes, in your interiority, there is something in need of repair, rather like what is on display here; where what we see is so much a mirror image of what you attempted to keep hidden. And yet something was broken, and the repair does not connect the disparate shards, it does something else.

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D. 

Objects. The hoard is full of them, and yes that sounds odd as it is not so much full of them as constituted by them. Even that is only partly true. Object relations and relations via objects. Is that what this is all about?
-Ronnie what is here is so familiar to me.
-Of course it is as everything here belongs to you. That is to say you had a relationship to everything here. It's rather like a society or land that you inhabited. 'Look', you might have said, 'this is all mine', or 'this was my home', or 'this is where I belonged.'
The hoard is outside you and inside you, and me too, I suppose. There is something missing and that is what I am attempting to find.
I guess what is absent is obvious. It has to do with how things hang together. It bears on what the hoard represents. It seems linked, of course, with what you left behind and what you never spoke about.
These are not necessarily one and the same, though there is an abstract term that might well unite them. Any pathway through the mess allows for a narrative, as if the direction and orientation involve meanings. Different directions then gives rise to different meanings.
And perhaps for each one there is a pivotal term that captures the essence of that particular drift. That is what needs to be discovered. What is pivotal are the master-signifiers that allow sense-making in this context. And I think what makes this difficult is that there are several that do not seem that obvious. All of this, of course, is what lies behind your silence and your attempt to banish a lot of your past.
-Ronnie, I did my best.
-Yes, I know. One of the things that made life difficult for both of us is your sense that negative emotions were a sign of weakness.
Do you remember my childhood friend, Julian?
-Of course, his mother was my closest friend.
-Julian cried a lot and I remember his father was always angry when that happened. He saw his son's fragility as a sign of weakness and as a betrayal of what was then a particular stereotype of masculinity.
-I never did that to you. I let you cry.
-Yes you did, and yet, you never wanted me to see you cry and you found it very difficult to share your pain and sadness, to the extent that when there was something wrong I thought is was my fault. So, insofar as your past was distressing it could not be brought out into the open.
-Yes, that is true. I was ashamed.
-What were you ashamed of?
-Not the past so much as what I felt about it.
And if those feelings, those negative feelings and the thoughts associated with them are allowed to breathe then a path is almost naturally formed here. For as we move and tarry then certain objects will come into view that reflect what you are experiencing. It is as if the mess here changes as the object fall into place. There is that pattern again, not fixed, but aligned potentially always to what you allow for in your sensorium. You can give them space or you can banish them. If you choose the latter then we are here for ever, sorting and sifting and arranging and rearranging in the hope that something might make sense, and resonate.
-But Ronnie, I left everything behind.
-You did and you did not. You parted from your family and yes, left your home and belongings but you also took everything with you.
As if all the objects we have here were inside and outside. Hidden, disowned, forgotten, laid aside, lonely, just remote. That's it.
As if inside there is a topography that allows for stuff to be hidden and almost impossible to find.
As if they are to be located on an island that is on the edge of a map. Difficult to find, hard to see, and almost impossible to go there.
-You loved some of what is here, didn't you?
-Yes, I did. I was very anxious and sometimes I think it was a disability but in between episodes I loved home and I loved our life there.
-And we have all of that here, somewhere.
-But if I get close to it I shall become very sad.
-What is the it?
-What I loved and left behind. The things and the thoughts.

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E.

-You want me to remember things don't you?
-I think not. I am after something rather different. It is not a case of trying to locate what you might have forgotten or a matter of trying figure out why certain memories were forgotten. And as I write that I think of losing a memory, as if it was a key or a wallet. In which case we might explore how come you mislaid what has not been remembered. No, it is not about that. It is not about loss but about something quite different.
It is about holding back, not being forthcoming, not sharing, being quiet about something and this seems to be connected to what I think of as a particular bodily and cognitive way of being.
-Goodness!
-Mama, code-switching, that is possibly what is key here. I remember so many times when you behaved in a certain way with me and the family and you were quite different with people outside our bubble. Yet it was more than that. You behaved in divergent ways with others. And that divergence seemed to be a function of how you wanted and expected to be seen. I think a lot of people do that to a certain extent but sometimes I thought of you as like a chameleon.
You switched from using a certain tone of voice to a very different one. Now that is one thing but I think this went further. What I am remembering is external. I could hear you moving from one way of speaking to another and all that involved. That was on the outside. But what about the inside?
-What do you mean?
-Code switching is discernible. But what if this mode of control, of change was part of a very labile sensorium that allowed for almost instant switching from one mode to another?
-I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to be seen as dignified and it was very important to me to maintain my bearing so people would be under no doubt as to my status.
-Yes, I realise that. But Mama intermittently the code switching went wrong. There were glitches.
-What are you talking about?
-I think sometimes people thought you were putting on airs. That maybe, just maybe, you were pretending to be somebody that you weren't.
-Hmm, that does rather raise the question of who was I?
-And here we are exploring something that is connected to that. It is not so much in inquiry in who you are but how come, to continue with this particular theme, you might have been changing memories in much the same way as you were on occasion, motivated to change your tone when speaking to someone.
I think there are similarities here between speech variation and memory changes. In each case something is or becomes silenced and hidden. And some of you acquaintances would never have know this.
-What would they not have known?
-That you behaved differently with them to how you were with other people.
I remember feeling or rather thinking that something was not quite right when I was a witness to this. I thought that maybe you might have appeared very self-conscious to your friend but I think I knew at the time that this was my problem. I was aware that something strange was going on and at time I wanted to stop you, as if the changes I was conscious of were just too much. Too much for me, and in a way I was envious of something. I am not sure what it was. Maybe of what I think of as your predisposition to self-display. And that seemed at times to involve self-consciousness and its lack. At the same time.
But here we have everything. All that is here is on the same level, on the same plane, undifferentiated. You can not put on airs here because there is no difference between putting on airs and modesty. It is not that you can not switch from one to the other but here it makes no sense.
-Ronnie how can that be?
-Because in a hoard everything melds together. To me the hoard is a wonderful example of what might be called a flat ontology. All the items, all the beings are in terms of their being, the same in their being status. In which case gushing or being effusive has exactly the same status as being overly retiring or behaving in an extremely unassuming way.

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F.

-Ronnie you can not go through this clutter because you do not know where you are going and you do not know what is important and whichever route you choose it is yours, not mine.
-Yes, that seems true, but not quite. It is yours and it is mine. That is what has made this especially sad. To say it is yours in the way you do is to cut me off, in much of the same way as you occasioned a split with so many close relations. I think there is a way, a profound way, in which we can both listen to the cries, not just in the distance, but near to us now. Cries of being forgotten and forlorn and cast aside and regarded as of no concern.
-Who is crying?
-The cries are coming from what is in the assemblage. I think they are crying for you. On your behalf.
-I have not asked them to do that for me.
-No you have not. But they know.
As if not telling them deprives them of a certain knowledge, namely the knowing of what needs to be done. If they did not cry out then almost literally nothing would ever get done, nothing would move or change. Not to cry is not to be affected and more important it is to express what is figural.
It is also more than that. It bears on the truth or rather the evocative value of the palimpsest as a descriptor of what is around us. It is a term that carries within it referents of space and depth. and not of linearity.
The crying is a lament, a group lamentation for what has been lost and forgotten, but it joins something here. If you respond to the cries then you are joined, linked to whatever is leaning towards you and if I orientate myself to you and the cries then we are all bound to that yearning.
The wailing is tonal and we can make our sounds too that can amplify what we hear.
-Why might I want to do that?
-Because the cries are sounds of suffering and they require a response. It is not like a problem waiting for a solution. What is needed is recognition, a sense of being heard, a sense of the acknowledgement of pain, even more the move to mourning for what has been lost. But remember here, everything is shared.
-And what happens if I do not want to do that.
-Mama if you do not move towards the cries of distress then nothing will change but there will be a constant beckoning, the wish, the desire that you give in will not go away.
-Give in to what?
-I think it is to the possibility of repair.

I circle around figures and shadows and try to catch the sounds and the darkness in the hope of being able to hear the words of the objects that are crying out. Do they speak in their language?
Maybe but the sound is unmistakable. The sadness, the cries of being lost somehow involve shrieks and silence.
As if even in the silence the noise is shattering and in the shrieks there is a terrifying stillness.
Each object has their own particular voice and here they sing together and they pause at the same time, and then start again. Moving like waves.
Nothing here exists alone, or separate. That is the identity of the hoard.
As if as soon as something is thrown on the pile it becomes interlinked, and the pattern changes.
And now we too are part of that. There is no possibility of individuation here, not for anything in the hoard and not for us.  I tell that to Mama and she struggles to believe it, knowing that as soon as she accepts it, she has to give in and release that part of her that hid those memories she did not want to allow into her awareness. For to have done that would have demanded the keenest attention. And it would have impeded her sense of herself as free to create whatever identity she wanted.
I circle around the silence and try to listen to the breaths almost contrapuntally sounding in what was now an enormous space. It was as if each single object was straining to be part of this multi-voiced cacophony. Only it wasn't dissonant, but it was insistent.
As if there had to be an agreed admission that this would never end.

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G.

-You mean that I am here for ever. And you too?
-Yes, you are here for ever, and as long as I am where I am, you are with me too. And no doubt the time stretches and slows down in relation to our desire to solve something. Except the solution acts as an answer or almost an echo to what is incomplete.
-Do you think that something is broken?
-Yes.
Mama shrugged and shivered as she thought that I referred to her as splintered and I told her otherwise. As so often if there was a sense of fault speaking even in a whisper she recoiled.
As if to hear the murmuring of mistakes and misdemeanors was tantamount to such serious charge that invariably led to a shut down.
As if something inside here told her to close her ears, and think that whatever was said was manifestly not true and no doubt a problem of the other's resentment, or anger, or mistrust, or more likely a case of bad manners.
As if sitting up straight at the table and using a napkin in a particular way would for sure settle a negative affective complaint. That was after all part of the point of elevated customs.
But now things were different. There was no one acting as a mirror to reflect back whatever Mama wanted.
-Ronnie I am alone. This is too much.
Only of course she was very much not alone. Family was nearby, only they were somewhat preoccupied with their own stuff and clutter. Mama wanted to go to them as dealing with someone else's mess always seemed fine for her.
But now we were together and she knew that she had to start negotiating what towering over her and she also knew that if she paid attention to what was there then memories would appear that themselves needed attention. Old memories, forgotten memories, orphaned memories, pastel images, multi-colored images and sounds billowing and proving almost impossible for her to ignore.
-What do I do?
-Start. Move. Gently.
-Why gently?
-Because what is here has its own integrity and that must be revered.
-And if not?
-Then, I think, we do not move through what is here. The alternative is to go round in circles and then something quite specific ensues.
-What is that?
-Just repetition. We see the same things in the same way in the same order at the same time in the same space and nothing, absolutely nothing changes. Unfortunately doing it that way involves a predictability that sometimes carries with it a certain consolation. Just because of its familiarity. But unfortunately unless we move in a different way we are stuck here for ever.
-What a thought!
-Ronnie how should I proceed? Where do we go first? Are you coming with me? Are you always going to be here?
-I suspect that what matters is not so much where next as how next. What is important is your stance, where and how you lean, as in what you might be leaning towards.
As if it is your position that is paramount. And I think that what is dominant as we decide to move is your attention. And mine.
-Ronnie what is that about?
-It is about paying attention, attending to what we see or pass by or pick up or consider or move to another spot. And in that attention the thing seen or heard or felt begins to take on an identity that more openly and clearly allows it to be connected to other items here. So as we uncover patterns, those turn out to be schemas and networks that involve links between items and more.
-More?
-Yes, we shall see the ways things here are interlocked and how we maybe attached to them.
-And the endpoint of all of this?
-I think the endpoint is not actually an endpoint so much as a possible resolution that allows for yet more tarrying.
The point is for the drift to carry on as if for ever, and I think it dependent here on something that is intrinsic to a particular type of attention.
-What is it?
-Repair.
-Oh goodness back to brokenness!
-But we are not sticking things together. It is more subtle than that. Perhaps what is constitutive of the shattered thoughts here and incomplete or forgotten memories and the sometimes insidious silence and the discordant wind is that what was important has not been absorbed. What resulted from that is that it is as if the hoard has been hollowed out.

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H.
-Shall we begin?
-Ronnie, it is about time.
We started, meandering, moving slowly and trying to take account of what was in the pile. Mama picked up things and then put them back; she saw things she had not seen for a very long time and seemed glad to have reclaimed what had been forgotten or just almost partitioned off. That is the way it works isn't it? There were experiences, happenings, events that she wished had never happened. She might have misbehaved, she might have ignored someone who depended on her and no doubt she probably spoke to a few people, possibly family members, in a supercilious way.
As if to say that she was above the riff-raff. She was not going to be shown up in a way that diminished her. No, she'd had enough of that, and since she was always on the look out for a particular attitude that she made sure to rebuff. The alternative was to be not just to be brought down in some way, no, it was not just about being made smaller or insignificant, or infantalised. It was more than that. It was for her as if some boundary had been transgressed and the other, be they stranger or acquaintance, ought, according to her, to have known this was not to be done.
 Curiously all of this bears on code switching, in a rather different way to the change from one language or idiolect to another. 

As if some internal part was open, there to be disturbed, summoned even, and vulnerable. But that sensitivity was dormant and when there was felt to be an attack there was always a second, no less than that, a micro moment, when that part, that sensitive interior would be manifest, but never owned or acknowledged.

-Ronnie, of course. What you are writing about me is obvious. Naturally I could not show what disturbed me, or rather I was not able to show to others my disturbance. Actually I was only dimly aware of it myself. I seem to remember Papa was like that too. Yes, I know you think that I was hard, or at least never admitted to being vulnerable.

As if being the victim was the most devastating and intolerable state. Curious this way of being; as Mama demonstrated both fortitude suggestive of independence and yet it was invariably accompanied by mimicry. Ah to be a member of the ruling class.

-Yes Ronnie, that is what I wanted. I always thought to be a member of that group would give me power and protection. So of course I tried to speak like them and dress like them and hope like I thought they might. I wanted my body to be transformed into a shape that would automatically give me entry into the group I wanted and yet I knew that I did not belong there. I wanted to be like them knowing it to be futile and pointless. And Ronnie I wanted you to be like them as well.

It was as if there was a part of Mama that strained to accomplish the impossible, all the while, pushing away any talk that amplified her status quo. But what was that?

I note it but am not sure. What is it to know one's place? How does one know that?

-Mama what was your place?

-With you my darling.

-But your place. Where was it?

-Darling with you, and going up. First floor, kitchen ware. Second floor, men's clothes. Third floor....Going up.

-Darling with my background I thought I could not go up. The only way to manage  that was to counter where I had come from. I needed to be released from that. Yes, I cut off, severed, pushed away, ignored, left behind, drifted somewhere else; all of that, as an attempt to start again. Only it was not quite that either. I want to move, to roam here. But I suppose we are doing that aren't we?

-Yes, all the time. Not in a straight line and not in a circle.

-Ronnie will you find what you are looking for?

-Maybe, I hope so.

We move slowly, as ever, and each of us pays very close attention to what we see in front of us. The hoard is groaning as it grows with each thought and with every step we take.  We need to reach under our imaginings as a way of mitigating the heaving sounds of what is around us.

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I.

-Ronnie what is that down there?
-That is something I am writing.
-What is it about?
-Us, of course.
-Really?
-What have you included?
-Why, everything that has taken place whilst we have been together down here.
-But Ronnie, I thought it was supposed to be about me.
-Well it is about you.
-If it is about me then why are you part of it too?
-Because I am an integral part of your story.
-You mean I can not have my story without you.
-Mama, what would that be like? Is that what you want?
-I am not sure.
-If so it would be about you and no one else. You alone, as if you were the last person alive in a world that had been emptied out, apart from you.
-Well, maybe. It is always like that isn't it?
-Yes, a story about someone is always about them with. The with is always there as without it there would be a void, a space of nil connections. I want to suggest that then the question of why is there something rather than nothing might be changed.
-To what?
-Why is there barely something rather than nothing? Mind you what you have raised about wanting the story to be just about you resonates with me in relation to something over there.
-Where?
-Look over there. Do you see that manuscript?
-Yes. What is it?
-It is something else I am writing.
-Can I have a look at it?
-Of course.
-What is it about?
-I think I would like you to read it before I tell you more.
-Ronnie, I shall do that. You know I am very tired at the moment. The thought of just carrying on without sitting down with a good book, well that is just too much. Oh and as always I need to sit near a fire. I do still get dreadfully cold. Ronnie, this mass of stuff is not warming. Not at all. And the thought of just drifting through it without any reprieve is quite frightening.
Now where can I sit?
-Over there.
-Have you talked to many people here?
-Yes, family and friends. But now I am just alone with you. When you leave I shall resume my forays into the other spaces here. I met some aunts and uncles but they barely recognized me and when I told them who I was they told me that I had changed so much. They were surprised to discover what I had done and how I had lived since I last saw them. They said that I had been very lucky to have left Vienna. They would not tell me about their lives after I came to England, but I knew. I really knew.
Ronnie, I am comfortable now. Will you please give me what we spoke about. Thank you.

Now there was silence, momentarily. It was as if the wind and the breaths from the assemblage had decided to reduce their plaintive cries in order to allow Mama some peace. But I thought it might not be long before the laments of various objects would start to sound one by one and then conjoined to allow for a polyphonic reverberation. That was becoming the identity of ths mass of items, things and thoughts and feelings and imaginings.
All the while, Mama was rocking gently in her chair and breathing slowly still holding the manuscript. Her movement began to imitate the movement of some of the clutter that was swaying in time to the rhythm of the multi-voiced grieving of what surrounded us.
I too felt the resonance of this immersive space. It was unavoidable, and in its own way it bore on what Mama was holding in her hands. I wanted to tell her but now her eyes were closed and I thought she might be asleep.
-Ronnie don't go. Stay with me here and in a moment I shall focus on what you have written.
Is it long? Is there a lot to read? Will I understand it? What if i don't?
-What you have there is not too long and I hope you will understand what I have written. If not then I shall try to explain whatever is not clear. You only have to ask. Mind you some of what I have written I do not understand. I mean that I am trying to put into words something that maybe is beyond language. In which case it might at time be best to just allow the words to drift over you.

                                                                -----------

J.

-Ronnie does this have a title?
-No, I have not thought of one yet. I have stopped and started it many times and always there are shifts in subject matter, and yet I keep on.
-Why? What are you trying to do?
-I guess I am trying to understand us. Actually that is not quite correct. Though it is partially true. For sure it comes from my experience and I am wanting to piece something together, and the image of the mosaic comes up again. This time the tiles, the broken parts all represent something conceptual. And again that is not quite right for some of them represent narratives, stories or myths. The challenge is for them to cohabit. How will they get on? What pattern or patterns are formed? Read it. It might all then fall into place.
-Ok Ronnie. I shall start now.

Tentative title: The Poetics of Sacrifice, Identity and Repair
Note. This is probably much too minimalist but maybe I will be able to add more later. If necessary.
Aim; to start with a Metalogue. Yes Batesonian through and through. And I suppose this dialogue is with myself.
What does Bateson write about the Metalogue? He writes: '‘a Metalogue is a conversation about a problematic subject. This conversation should be such that not only do the participants discuss the problem but the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject’.
I take that to mean that the conversation is recursively related to the topic.

-Ronnie is this the start?
-Yes
-It is very chatty. Is it meant to be like that?
-Yes, for the moment at least.
-Oh well, I shall carry on.

There was no silence at the start
But only later, a subsequent means
To contain what felt shameful.
-Ronnie what is shameful? Do I have to work it out for myself?
I don't think I am going to like this. It is difficult and I am feeling tired again.
Why do you bother me with this now?
-Then leave it.
And at that moment there was silence and then the manuscript dropped to the ground, only to be swept up by what was nearby.
And then some china figurines moving to the sound of the dust spoke in unison:
-We can read it. Show it to us. We have been lonely here. Once we were all so frightened that we would slip through someone's hands and then smash and we would then shatter but so far we have survived.
-Have you been here all the time?
-Yes, but we lived in Vienna for a very long time.
-We knew Herta when she was young. Do you want us to read what you have written?
If not tell us about it. We miss conversations down here. It is not that things don't talk to us but most of the items here have a tendency to either all talk at the same time or they just talk to their brethren.
-I am writing about silence and secrets.
-We know all about that, as we have spent most of our shelf life mute, but observing what went on around us. We used to sit on a shelf, a mantelpiece shelf in view of everyone who came to eat in the apartment. Sometimes someone would pick us up and blow the dust off. We did not like that. On other occasions we would be dusted and that hurt.
So silence?
-Yes.

Others joined in and the questions remained unanswered. There were sounds, not singing sounds or warbling or chanting but soft mutterings and in unison.
As if there was a conductor. And at times the muttering stopped but just for a moment or two and then continued.

-Is this silence?
Of course not except for the breaks in the mumbling. Is a whisper silent?
Is music in one's head, quiet, tranquil music silent?
If there are sounds that are imagined but quiet on the outside then is that silence?
Mama was always silent about certain things and yet she kept that hidden.
But how can silence be hidden?
Because most of the time the everyday noise protects it.
Protects the silence?
Yes.
From what?
Both of us.
-Ronnie you ask too many questions.
-Mama I do not ask enough.

-Figurines what do you think?
-We mind our own business. Most of the time.

Mama was sleeping again, and the manuscript was lying by her feet.
She breathed deeply and smiled.
The figurines moved and watched her.

                                            -------------------

K.

I pick up my manuscript and see that there are many blank pages. They wait for the pressure of the letters but I do not know how to continue from where I left the writing some time ago. There is not much of a story, but rather, what seems like microscopic images of our relationship and what I realize more and more Mama's closure. That was the crux of the silence that I am trying to interpret. It was not a forgetting. It was not a don't know. It was not a don't care either.
It was something quite different.
Trauma? Maybe. Not necessarily.