By now it has probably been half an hour. Out of boredom, I begin to tap my fingers. Nearly everything around me has sunk into a dark, midnight stupor. The only object that I can still clearly make out is the tattered, white arm chair. Next to it, a reading lamp winks in and out of existence, plaguing a corner of the room with faltering bursts of light and the faint sound of electrical hissing.
With a sigh, I decide to turn on the main light switch. Pulling myself up, I make my way from the end of the bed to the entrance of the room. On the way, my leg thuds against the side of the arm chair. Staring down in annoyance, I notice the chairs sprung coil and the chunks of yellow foam that have burst through its shiny upholstery. Lodged into the inside of one of the coils is a small piece of paper. I scrape the piece of paper out of the metal hoops with the edge of my nail.
Just as I do so, I hear DM's door creak open. I quickly stuff the piece of paper into the pocket of my jeans and collapse into the arm chair.
Then, recomposing myself, I turn towards the door. It is slightly ajar. I can hear the voice of Derek coming from the passage. His large hand is clasped around the door, as if he is leaning against it from the outside. After a while I hear a second, more muffled voice. It is that of my friend. Although I am too far away to hear what they are talking about, I presume it is an argument of some kind. The nasal, interrogative, growl of Derek is countered by the clipped responses of my friend. The terse interchange goes on for about five minutes or so. Then, suddenly the voices stop. There is an awkward spate of silence. It is almost as if the words have ground away at each other until even the issue that caused the argument in the first place has ceased to become relevant. But this lasts only for a moment.
After a loud grunt of disaprovel, Derek removes his hand from the inside of the door. Agitated by the movement, the door revolves inwards. The chink of harsh, electric light, previously trapped between the door and its frame, begins to widen. Fanning across the room, it spills over piles of books, loose sheets and the frayed edge of the carpet. Eventually, the door clatters against the side of the cupboard. For the first time I see both DM and Derek. They are standing in the middle of the passageway, facing one another. DM has his hands in his pocket with a downcast head. Derek is arched above him, leaning on  the wooden handle of a spade. Derek seems to be waiting for an answer of some kind. Leering down at DM, he scrapes the tow of the spade against the floor.
When they start talking again, I can hear what they say since the door is fully open.
"Yes" says DM without looking up at Derek.
" Good and don't give any trouble about it next time either. Half an hour isn't a lot to ask for. You're not doing anything useful with yourself anyway. How old are you? Twenty three isn't it? Jesus, that's pathetic. That room of yours is becoming dingier every day. Christ, you haven't aired it for three days. What's wrong with you? It's probably all that writing of yours- it's turning your mind into muck. When was the last time you actually went out? I wouldn't be surprised if you're still a virgin. Shame. You should get out into the real world- get a job, chase girls, get drunk. Instead, you spend each night with those loser friends of yours. Don't think I don't know how you work. You sit all regal in the that filthy room of yours, smoking cigarette after cigarette, talking that sophisticated mumbo jumbo of yours, pretending to all your friends that you know what the world's really about. But what do you know, eh? Have you even bothered to get a job, your drivers license or even wash the dishes for more than three days in a row? Moms onto you. She's not going to buy it for much longer."
While Derek blurts away, DM remains motionless. In the splitting light of the passage way, his thin, curly hair sprays up like a sparse cloud. Beneath, his long, pockmarked face is tense with concentration. Every so often he shuffles his feet and casts a look in my direction. It is a haggard look, full of ironic hate and boredom.
Derek continues to loom above him. Supporting his weight on the spade, he picks at the
stubble along his jaw and draws his lips into a sneer. He says my name occasionally. I hear 'Jacob" this and "Jacob" that. I am not sure whether he is angry with me or not. All I know is that the argument has more to do with DM's rebellious streak, which basically amounts to a
calculated laziness, than with any wrong doing on my part. My name is just another piece of flotsam that has been swept up by Derek's anger. There is also the clank,clank of the spade and the still shuddering door.
Eventually the argument comes to an end. Derek thumps down the passage muttering obscenities. DM draws away, towards me, with a lingering look of hatred directed at his brothers back. Shutting the door, he walks past me and settles on the end of his bed
"What was that about" I say
" That old root in the back garden. My brother tried to make me help him dig it out. I didn't want to. So we fought. That's why it took me so long to get back."
" Oh... but you ended up doing it, didn't you? I haven't been counting but it's probably been half an hour since you went to let the others out."
DM does not answer. Getting up, he walks towards the small desk at the end of his room. Bending over, he picks up a loose cigarette, places it between his lips and lights it with a smooth gesture..
I grow apprehensive. When DM remains silent for a long time, there's usually more to come. Sometimes for instance, after a long pause, he talks about freedom. He doesn't see freedom in the same way as most people do. In my neighborhood, it's either about Eastern philosophy, beaches, an ability to step outside the system, attain inner harmony and reap the benefits of Tantric sex. DM is intolerant of these 'misconceptions'. He calls any kind of new ageism a hodge podge synthesis of the most egotistically gratifying parts of various religions, which, once isolated from the totality of the religious message they represent, become the staple diet of emotionally unfulfilled housewives, Hollywood stars and teenagers who experiment with drugs in the forest. When his whit is at its most acerbic, he describes the new age phenomenon as an attempt to 'pussy foot between heaven and hell'. He is of course no less severe with pleasure seekers and materialists. He usually states that 'they escape the tension of existence, abstract every present moment into a potential future conquest and are as much afraid of pain as they are of poetry."
“Yes I did end  up doing it” he continues after his fifth or sixth drag “ I must have chopped away at that stupid piece of wood for at least twenty minutes. Derek was standing above me, giving orders and shining his torch. I had to clamber around in the pit looking for the smaller, connecting roots. I must have found at least three. They looked weird, almost like tentacles. I remember lifting my axe and seeing it shiver into the wood with a dumb ring. After a couple of strokes, the wood began to split and twist. Then, just when I was getting into it, we had to stop. Mr. Kronie's wife began shouting at us from across the fence. “Please have some respect for my husband” she said “ you know about his condition. It just isn't especially at this time of the night. Derek apologized and said that we would stop in ten minutes or so. I  Looked up at him and then continued chopping. It was then that I tried to remember who exactly Mr Kronie was. Apart from the fact that he was my neighbor and that he was busy dying, I didn't know a lot. Derek had once mentioned that he was some kind of high ranking businessman.”
Only knowing this  piece of hearsay, I started playing a game. I imagined that each cut I made into the wood was another year that Mr Kronie had notched up. One, two, three... I counted up all the way to seventy-six. That, I imagined, was the way Mr Kronie had gone about his life, leaning into each action with an ugly, heavy intent, seeing the groove in his mind and then following through until the surface in front of him was cleaved. And what had all that certainty amounted to? That contempt for anything ambiguous or wavering? I imagined innumerable memories furrowing past him, while he remained rigid, immobilized by the prospect of death. Surely now that he was so close to death, those certainties were coming
back to haunt him. The very things that used to make his day's tolerable were now made intolerable by the thought of death. His wife feather dusting glass cabinets, the dishes being washed, cars rushing past, the shouts of construction workers coming from across the street.
all those little acts of industry that used to fill him with pride and complacency.”
“How could he bear them” I wondered as I continued chopping. How could they not seem too rough and direct for his memory shattered mind... reaching and tugging in a hundred incorporeal directions? No wonder he complained to his wife. How could any dying man bear the sound of axe cracking into wood ? And in a moment I knew what Mr Kronie wanted and why he was lying in his room, waiting in agony for Derek to give the order for me to stop chopping. What he wanted was a dispersion of energy, a twilight spent in a nook, some place that allowed for subtle musing and echoes.. echoes embalmed  in clammy darkness and the smell of dust Above all else, a place where the world would appear to halt with him and take cognizance of his life. A place that did not promise continuation but a sensation of backwardness, fretted with gentle stirrings of remorse, longing, guilt and love.”
For the first time since he began to speak, DM pauses, He looks up from the floor in my direction. “ Do you understand what I'm saying Jacob” he continues after a moment “ do you understand that I may just be right and that everything that once gave him pleasure  now contradicts him the most painful of ways.”
“Mr. Kronie is busy dying and each unconscious, muscular movement, each mindless twitter of existence is busy taking on a new, loathsome meaning for him. And believe me he won't find much relief now that I've finished cutting up that root. When I was putting the tools back into the shed, I pulled myself up onto the wall and looked into his bedroom. There was an oxygen cannister next to his cot. I suppose that's why he had one of those plastic nozzles attached to his mouth-the kind hospitals give you so that you can breath a bit easier. Even from the wall I could hear the contraption clicking away. Just think how much worse it must have been for him inside the room. That mechanical pattern, accompanied by the cold gaseousness of manufactured air, continuing indefinitely.”
I do not know what to say after DM has finished speaking. I always find it difficult to speak when I have been listening to someone talk for a long time. Even though it's too dark to see anything properly, I sense that DM is waiting for an answer. I grow nervous. I do not know what to say. I could make some vague comment like “hmmm”.That would satisfy DM. It would make him believe a number of things. Firstly, that I had been listening to him, secondly, and most importantly, that his words were too profound and erudite to elicit anything more from me than a fawning and indecisive answer. But instead I say nothing. I sense DM's increasing agitation.
As usual, I can only think around DM's little speech, not inside it. I always find myself doing this when I'm alone with DM. The contents of his speech.. death, futility, longing and time? Those words have never meant anything to me. They glide by. What interests me more is the peculiarity of my friend. DM is the only person I know who speaks thoughts. For the whole duration of his speech he didn't stumble over a single one of his long phrases.. It was almost as if the words were coming bright and smooth- like they do when I'm alone. There were none of the umm's, but's, err's and ja's that disrupt my everyday talk.
The sound of DM clearing his throat makes me even more nervous. I thrust my hands into my pocket and start rolling the piece of paper between my fingers. If it's under my thumb when I count to five, I'll say “hmm”. If not.... well,then, it's dark enough. Besides, I know DM too well. Where does this little speech of his fit? Probably where most thing fit when you've know a person for longer than a month and have observed their behavior with any degree of care-neither here nor there but somewhere in the middle.
One darkness darkness two Derek looms up like a crazed tree three FOCUS FOCUS. Four grapple click-perhaps the sound of Mr Kronie's air cannister- there is an impression of sweaty roundness beneath my fingers Four have I been prejudiced towards saying nothing the whole time have I even begun to move my fingers let me start  moving them about time must almost be up.”
“Well” I say suddenly, without knowing which finger the scrap of paper is beneath “what you said makes sense in a way. Only, couldn't it be just the opposite. You know I'm bad at explaining myself, but couldn't it be that you're just getting carried away. To be honest, I can't
say for certain that I understood everything you said. Still, though, it seems to me that if you're on the verge of death, there's more reason to stick to the certainties of your life than to despise them. I mean why desire more uncertainty when you're about to face the greatest uncertainty? I think I disagree with you. I think that a  man would rather die to the dripping of a tap than to probing thoughts in regard to his  own life. I'm sure by that time you must be too sick and worn out with yourself to bother with any final epiphanies.”
“ You're probably right” DM answers “  On late Sunday nights I'm too tired and ambitious to think up anything that isn't  contradictory. I think I've even forgotten the reason for telling you about Mr Kronie. There was a definite point. I was almost sure that I would say something and that you would agree with me and  that at that exact moment we would both be standing above the story, looking down at it from the same height with the same knowing expression. Damn it's frustrating how nothing coincides with the way you thought it out before.  There's always some unforeseen response, normally a very simple one, based on the blandest type of common sense, that makes everything you planned look unbelievingly silly and naive. The worst part of it is that that opinion,doesn't have to be true, doesn't have to be better than your, it just has to be said with enough conviction in the right place at the right time and everyone will buy into it.”
“But wait. Wasn't there something you wanted to tell me? Of course, that's why you've
 been waiting.”
“ Yes there is” I answer “ I wanted to talk to you about something, that could only belong to this room, at this time of the day. Also, I can only talk to you about it. No one else would understand it's significance.”
“Well, what is it then?”
“ A week ago I decided that god does not exist.”
“Why”
“I don't know really... I've never been the type to go in for ambitious reasons. I think that people use big, general reasons to cover up their own smaller, more pertinent reasons.
As I finish the sentence, the reading lamp goes out completely. The room is plunged into sudden dark. The walls become airy and blank. Above me, the book shelf resembles a vague strip. Nothing remains of the shelves geometric divisions and tightly packed, cross, slanting books. I look in DM's direction. A vapid, oblong shape begins to congeal, separating itself off from the uncertainty of the room.
Am I doing the same, I think  with horror. Is DM looking at me from across  the room and seeing the same thing. What?. A blotch.... something spun out of dark, musty air and pubescent, unfinished statements about God. This is a moment. However brief, it does count.  I am becoming a dark swelling.  Half obliterated. 
How can DM's story about Mr Kronie compare to this, I think to myself. DM didn't even care about Mr Kronie. He didn't get upset because Mr Kronie was sick, he got upset because I wasn't a passive slot. He wanted his carefully fashioned words to pass through me without any resistance. Then afterwards he wanted to pick me up, give me a good jangle and hear the echo of his own words. All DM is worried about is finding a safe receptacle for his words. How can he know anything about emptiness? There are worse scenarios than those to do with misplaced words. There are ones like I am experiencing now- moments where my whole beings don't find the slot. Moments when I hang useless or perhaps exaggerated, until I  become a gross caricature of myself    
After a minute or two, a lit match swathes through the darkness. DM is onto his fourth cigarette. I  see DM again. In the feeble light, his skin appears sallow and wax like.
As the match begins to splutter, I raise myself from the arm chair and walk across to the light switch.
“Don't” says DM before I am half way there, “I prefer it like this. I've got a lot more to say. Let me just finish this smoke.”
I return to the arm chair without objection  From the moment I'm seated, the darkness continues to haunt me. I cannot stand the thought that DM is peering at me and I am nothing
more than another raw shape. In short I cannot stand the fact that I am present at my own absence. Agitated beyond belief I disregard DM's eccentric and hopefully morbid wish. I leap off the chair and wrench open the French doors just opposite the arm chair. A cool shaft of street light floods into the room.
DM does not say anything.  His only response is to twist his cigarette into the ash tray on his lap.
“Well” he says in a withering voice, a moment later “ don't you have anything more to say for yourself.”
“Yes I do. I wrote a poem. It's the closest I can come to understanding why I stopped believing. Only, since I'm going to say it- I don't have it written down- you have to understand that each pause I make is the equivalent of a full stop... if it were written down. That's important.  
“ That's odd. Say it then.”
“ Okay, here goes
 

                                        “I looked up at the night sky.
                                         I heard a cockroach scuttle.
                                         Falling asleep.
                                         Wave upon wave heaving.”
                                          

“ Is that it?” says DM after I've finished “ Please tell me you have something more? I don't even ask for anything 'grand or ambitious' as you put it. But wait... I understand your reasoning there. Not everyone can make their home in world thrown off skelter by a God-breaking decision. Not many people would like a home with gloomy recesses, and half-shattered arches soaring through frigid emptiness. Some atheists still need a crutch.  Like you they skirt the abyss clutching inept poems.  There's nothing to be ashamed of in that.”
“There are worse cases than yours. More tragic and shameful. Look at Hamlet. He knew the world for what it really was...” a sterile promenade”. And the universe? “ A foul congregation of vapors”. He knew without a doubt. And yet the one act which could have brought about his proud rebellion and shaken the stuttering and vulgar pageant of Christianity to it's very core was denied to him; he would not kill himself and fulfill the true meaning of his protest because he thought he still believed in God. Innocent, premature fool! Despite his courage, he could only bare to lean over and stare into the futility of His absence if he pegged himself to His make believe presence... that ancient, mold ridden word, God. He needed that last, washed out husk of a reality to stave off the alien terror and anguish that were about to consume him”
In his heart, Hamlet was an atheist without even knowing it. Jacob, could you furnish me with an example more deserving of pity and contempt than that !.”
“ But come now” continues DM, putting on an upper class English drawl and waving his cigarette in a purposefully melodramatic way “ Don't tell me there isn't a crumpled note in your pocket? A note scrawled in a unsteady, almost illegible hand. Not just any note mind you. A passage from Nietzsche that you copied down at one o'clock last night. Perhaps one of his more mature passages- taught, dark, polished and infinitely mediative. Ah, now that would be something. Then we would have something to really talk about. We would leave this room- it would be too small and stifling- and head to a dilapidated, wind swept sea side cafe. We would say things like  “The innocence of the ceaseless change of things, as soon as one consents to it, represents the maximum liberty”.Then, we would survey the view beneath us with, ironic satisfaction and say “ what good is a book that does not take us beyond all books”.
DM's barrage of words leaves me stunned. I try to think my own thoughts as he continues to rattle away. It takes me a while before I can chain my thoughts together and raise them above
the din of his excited, quivering voice.
DM has made the worst error, I think to myself, he has mistaken my honesty for simplicity. Unlike DM I don't try and look into the horizon every time I speak. That's why he dismissed my poem and that is why I am proud of my poem. It does not rely on an idea or anything outside of me. Writing it down was almost like noosing a shuffle to the flat white of a page. 
How could he ever understand a poem written in that style? How could he fathom the importance of the full stop's? When I wrote the poem they were like rounded voids. Could he grasp that those full stops were not there to emphasize the poems discontinuity, but is contorted and persistent continuity?
 “ Have you been listening to me” I hear DM say suddenly in a loud  voice.” The carnival whirl of names and quotations comes to a halt.
“ Kind of.” I say, trying unsuccessfully  to remember a single fact.
“ Well never mind then. That's your loss. But what I have to say now is especially relevant to you. It's simply this; like most people, you don't realize the significance of what you've done. I couldn't bear it if one of my most intelligent friend's  were to become another one of those insipid atheists.. They're the most common pest in the suburbs. They deny God, take a step forward- in your case write a poem-  cautiously shine their torches at the chaos in front of them with and are perfectly satisfied. They don't realize that, that single step implies a hundred other steps.. treacherous steps that must be followed through in order that a shadow of a  meaning might fall across an otherwise mediocre and arbitrary decision..”
“ Go on” I say mildly curious.
“Well” continues DM “ this may not seem to the point, but do you believe in destruction?”
“ I'm not sure. “
“ Generalize. Say yes or no.”
“ I suppose not.”
“ That's what I would say too. Destruction is pointless unless...”
“ Unless something comes out of it. Unless you create something from the destruction.”
“ Exactly. Now let's take things one step further. The 'something' that comes out of the destruction has to be better than the thing that was destroyed. Otherwise there was no point in destroying the thing in the first place.”
“ I suppose so. But I don't see where this is going. I think you stopped listening to me a long time ago.”
“ You're wrong there. I've been listening very carefully. Here's how I see things; you've done away with God. Destroyed him. By not believing in him you've effaced his image from every person flower, stone and tree.  You've...”
“ Wait a moment” I say angrily “ You're getting carried away again. You're right Sunday nights do make you too ambitious. My not believing in God is a purely individual choice. It's got nothing to do with anyone else. My choice won't actually affect them in a significant sense. They'll go on believing in the same way as I'll go on not believing.”
“ Oh really. Tell me this then. Do you believe that we are alone, that a large portion of our experience is incommunicable and that we can never convey the totality of ourselves to another person?'
“ Yes I do, without doubt, But where is this leading? This is the second time you've gone completely off the point.”
“Patience. So in other word you believe in the subjectivity of experience?
“ I don't know what that word means” I say feeling increasingly impatient.”  
“ It means that each persons experience is as valid, mystical and true as the next persons. It also means that we are all equally unable to explain and justify the real, personal significance
of our actions to others.”
“ Yes I agree with that,”
“ So you''ll also agree with me that no one can ever escape their subjectivity.”
“ I suppose I would have to.”
“ So when you make a choice, it's not just for yourself, but for everyone around you as well.”
“ I don't understand how you came to that conclusion.”
“ Simple. All I'm saying is that when you make a choice, like you have with God, you don't go around thinking “ God doesn't exist for me” but” he exists for those people over there.”

"You may of course believe that the illusion of God exists for them, but you won't believe in the actuality of his existence in relation to them.
“ Don't you see that whenever we make a choice, we don't just choose for ourselves, but automatically as it were for those around us? Think it over. You'll see that I'm right.”
“ So” continues DM without waiting to see if I agree with him or not “ your choice of not believing in God is not just a personal one. It does effect those around you. Now  if you remember what you agreed with me about on destruction, it stand to reason, that if you destroy God, you have to create something better to replace him with. That's my proposition for you. It 'll take you to step twenty-seven..”
I remain silent. I do not know what is what. Perhaps I'm entranced  by DM's crazy proposition  perhaps I'm just worn out. My head buzzes and echoes. The smoke infested darkness makes my throat itch.
“ I  think I need to go now” I say in a distant voice. “My parents must be worried by now. I've probably been here since seven-thirty. Thank you though. I needed to talk this over with someone. You were the right choice. Oh and you know what to tell the others, we spoke about it yesterday- that I'm quitting. I need to find work. My parents say it'll give me life experience. How did you put it again.. oh yes.. you said they want me to become a 'congenial social organism'. That's good. Spiteful and comic. Well I guess I should be off then, cheers.”

Saying this I get up from the arm chair. I have known DM for long enough to let myself out the house, grab a snack from the fridge before I leave and not bother  too much with goodbyes. Despite our differences, we are good friends.   
“ Cheers, and don't forget what I've just said. It took God seven days to create the world. Since you destroyed God, you should be quite confident that you can at least change the world for the better in six days. I'm being dead serious.” Says DM as I close the door behind me.
Here is the real world  I think as the door whines closed. Here is the passage way, the plastic water bottle on the edge of DM's table, the cheap floral wallpaper that is made stark in the kitchen light, the piles of stained magazines acting as a leg to a cupboard, the odor of burnt grain that comes from the old hamster cages and the oil darkened window frames of his back door. This is the real world. Still, certain and established. My grandfather belongs here, wagging his gaunt finger, muttering words like prosperity, cooperation, eternity and faith
Once I am out on the street, my head begins to clear. For a moment I feel better. Then it is the same. The same as it has been ever since I made my decision. Perhaps I did not say enough to DM. If I had, he would have known that I was well into my fifth step.
 Just to be absolutely sure,I  say the word “tree”. The word does not lock into the solid spaces on either side of me. It knocks against them for a while then grows limp, shrivels and hangs. As I make my way home, the suburbs are dotted with treespaces.

Turning down Sanatorium Road, I think, how much longer  it will be until each word appears as expedient as the word 'tree'. How much longer until there are facespaces, seaspaces, skyspaces, rootspaces, bookspaces? How much longer until each word I know is inadequate and only appears to obscure a clot of existence? When I left DM's room I tried to forget. After his mad flurry of words I thought the world would settle.
 I was wrong. My grandfather, rock, rock, rocking was wrong. Shading his grizzled brow, he used to survey his farm from his kerosene lit stoep. His land was flat and expressionless, like his one lame eye. Looking out with a scowl, he spoke as if inconsistency was the greatest
fallacy of mankind. He saw eternity steady, rock, rock rocking dependably like his chair.
Meanwhile his one good eye didn't notice the smoke from his pipe, looping and doing acrobatics. He always snarled “ Don't play near water. Water just dreams. Rather help your mother and earn a Rand or two. This great world is built upon small acts.”
Trying to think of something else, I turn towards my encounter with DM. For all it's irregularities, it was very similar to many other nights. Only, this time round, hidden behind his voluptuous words and playful irony, there was a certain aridity. A loneliness that had been hemmed in for so long that it could only release itself in a torrent of words.
And yet, I go on thinking, he changed towards the end. He almost pounced on me with that proposition of his. It must have been premeditated. Those terse, cutting sentences were too uncharacteristic of him to have been made up on the spot. He must have spent hours scouring them down to their bare essentials. That's the only way he could have driven me into a corner with such economy. But why though? There was something secretive and menacing in his whole attitude. It was almost as if he were holding something in front of me without wanting me to know just how dangerous that 'something' was.
 A sharp hoot breaks up my thoughts. I turn round. There is a car behind me. As I move across to the pavement, it speeds up and bumps off down a small, gas lit street.. Above, a treespace rustles.
I carry on walking along the pavement afterwards. I am almost home now. Feeling cold, I put my hands in my pocket. I feel it instantly. The piece of paper that was stuffed into the coil of DM's arm chair. Up till now I had clean forgotten about it. I pause, take it out of my pocket and unravel it. There is a only a single sentence on the piece of paper-

                                        “Existence precedes essence”

The sentence is written exactly in the middle of the page. There is so much space around it, as if so many false steps were made extinct by it, burnt away.