I was eating a Labneh (1) sandwich when it finally happened. My body gave out. I felt something crunchy between my teeth. The feeling was awful, especially since I didn�t know what was that �thing� in my mouth. After a short while, which seemed like infinity, I realized that the crunchy �thing� was part of one of my own teeth. That got me quite depressed really, the irrefutable proof that my body was in decay- and I was left bewildered for a few moments, carrying my decaying body in my hands.

When the moment subsided, I realized yet another shocking fact: I chewed and swallowed my tooth. A part of me. I ate myself- and the concept of cannibalism came flashing by, as well as images of long gone ancient societies, societies that probably never existed. These places, now in ruins, had very peculiar laws that governed the way people would live and die. When a citizen of a certain city of theirs grew old, when the first sign of decay appeared on his body, a ceremony would take place, and the citizen would be escorted kindly, surrounded by his offspring, loved ones and friends to the city gates, and would never be allowed in the city again. Outside the walls, the cast-out, decaying person would join all the ones that had preceded him, and would start a ceremony of his own, a slow ceremony, according to which he was supposed to eat himself. He would start with his big toe, and then eat all his toes and both feet. He would then move to his legs, then his belly and chest, then his hands and arms. What would remain, before the final moment of self-destruction arrives, are his genitals and mouth. And in a frenzy of pain and pleasure his life would end, leaving nothing behind but a pair of lips rotting in the hot sun, and words that were said and remained hovering in the thick air:

� It is neither a cave nor a tomb

And I was amazed of my own breathing

And astonished of the pain that would sometimes overcome me

And white dreams would reach me.

Here I can sleep

But the cold is overwhelming

And I have to keep it in my body

And dream of vegetable carts

I remember that the world had women in it

And that I was alone [�]

How alone I was and didn�t realize

How little air there was

And how hard it was to breathe.

It is neither a cave nor a tomb

And I would inhale astonished

And I would miss the earth and the insects

And when I looked to the wall

I�d know that the tomb was not closed

Because at the far end

Peasants lived

And salesmen and students.� (2)

*******

The writer of this poem is a friend of mine, and he actually had no idea that his text was going to be used in this context. But that�s what happens when somebody�s mind is focused on a certain issue, like mine was after the tooth incident. Although decay is not a new theme in the modern culture, I couldn�t get the idea out of my mind. And actually it was not its �newness� that attracted me, but the fact that it made me see things that were always present around me but never caught my attention. I was invited to spend the evening at some friends� house, to relax and catch up, but all I could see was what Joanna and Christine, two of my friends, were wearing. Joanna�s jeans were very �� la mode�, dark blue 70�s style. She probably liked those jeans because she wore them a lot, and that I could tell from the fading marks, the shifting of the color from dark blue to a more grayish shade of that color, especially around where she sits, her bottom. But what filled me with an unreasonable and unwanted nostalgia was Christine�s outfit: She had on a new synthetic furry jacket, electric blue with gold embroidery, which complimented her dark skin and pitch black hair. But at the same time, she was wearing an old pair of trousers that I�d seen her wear so many times. And to top that, some threads hung loose from the hem of the trousers, a definite sign of their age. And suddenly the thought of the Papin sisters (3) filled my head, or more accurately what Paul Eluard and Benjamin Peret said upon hearing of their liberating crime: �They emerged fully armed from a song by Maldoror�. There was something very paranoiac about the ambivalence in Christine�s look, and the fact that her trousers bore the evidence that we knew each other for a long time, too long maybe, triggered a deep longing for a different past, and possibly for the potentiality of another future. In this future clothes would not get into that horrid state, and would not be evidence of a certain past nor of its corresponding anterior futures,

�L� tout n�est qu�ordre et beaut�

Luxe, calme et volupt�� (4)

********

The inhabitants of the city I mentioned above appear to be barbaric- after all, we are all taught that we should love and respect our elders, that beauty is �within� and not �skin deep�, that the value of a person resides in her/his actions and not appearances. But that would be a very hasty judgement on our part, and most of all, we would be applying our values to a society about which we know very little. From what we do know, though, they had a great respect for humanity- and their actions should be understood from that angle. For instance, they had a very deep affection for their big toe, because they believed that it was the part of their bodies which differentiated them from all other animals. That was only logical, of course, since human beings were the only mammals that had a big toe in their feet (5). That led to a strange association between �human nature� and �big toes�, and that what would explain why the people who moved outside the walls to eat themselves started with their toes. In fact, if we think of that whole process not as barbaric cannibalism, but as a merciful self-effacement, a human moral stand against the changes in their bodies which will affect the perfect order of their luxurious, calm and beautiful city- then we would be able to understand why they wanted to start with eating their big toe: eating their humanity was a sign that they were humans, and that they were willing to sacrifice their existence for the sake of a higher purpose.

Let me elaborate this issue further by using a restaurant which used to be in that city as a metaphor: The restaurant was called The Central (6), and in fact it occupied a central part in the city plan, and in the life of its inhabitants. The restaurant occupied an old house, one of those beautiful three-arched houses scattered around the city. But there was a certain state of urgency about that particular house: it was crumbling. Which meant that it was threatening the order of things that I described above. The logical thing to do was to tear down the house, an allegorical re-enactment of the self-effacing citizens who left the city when their time came. But someone had another idea, another plan: Since the house was going to �die� anyway, why not use a theatrical twist to enhance the effect, turning it into some kind of symbol? So it was done: the building was surrounded with a metallic structure of poles, beams, and crossbeams, a three-dimensional grid that seemed to hold it together. As for the interior, where people went to eat, it appeared to totally negate the exterior, or more accurately: it appeared to negate the existence of the house itself. Walls, floor and ceiling were all covered with small rectangular pieces of wood, not more than 3 cm wide, neatly organized into geometrical patterns. These patterns even extended over the windows, tightly sealing them, and cutting off any reminder, no matter how faint, of the outside world. The decrepit skin of the house was thus trapped between two neatly designed layers, serving as a reminder of what the city would be like if not for its strict rules.

The results of such a dramatic setting exceeded by far the aims of its designers: as I mentioned, the interior was completely cut off from exterior reference, and that produced an atmosphere of containment immediately felt by the visitors and enhanced even further by the way the food was served. The restaurant had only one huge O shaped table. People would sit around it on slightly disproportionate chairs with very tall backs that completely hithe user. Furthermore, the kitchen was below the serving area, and in order to serve food, the waiters would slowly come up from beneath using a staircase that was placed in the space surrounded by the huge table- a trap within a trap. When the food was served, the ambient lights would become very dim, leaving only the light emitting from the small lighting devices, placed in front of each customer and directed solely towards his/her plate. This created an awkward and incommensurable feeling of isolation: each person was left facing his food as if it was his destiny, a rehearsal of the times to come when his body would give out and nothing would be left but to eat it. So the restaurant became very successful, almost a shrine in those days, where people would come to sit and eat together in complete isolation. A metaphor within another metaphor.

***********

Many books have been written about modern isolation and/or solitude, especially since the 1990s and the appearance the World Wide Web, which was supposed to �bring people together� in the new �global village�. A neat promise in a not so neat world, accentuated by the mere fact that there was a decision to call this phenomenon a �village�, and to exploit the idyllic associations that usually accompany that term. In fact, one might think that the appellation itself, and the promise to �connect� all the people in the world, came from what remains of the 1960�s hippie culture which calls itself �New Age� now. In short, we can summarize this by the duality �City vs. Nature�, where �Nature� is good and the urban environment is �bad�, or as Meyer Schapiro would put it, the City would give us its profile, while we get to see the full face of Nature (7). And anyway, who doesn�t remember the horrible lonely lives of Eleanor Rugby and Father Mackenzie in the famous Beatles song? But it soon turned out that isolation was not just a result of us being �connected�, but a pre-condition of that connection and even the ultimate condition of being Human, of belonging to the Human Race: if you don�t connect yourself and stand up to be counted then you�re outside the New Global System, and since that system has no boundaries, no �outside�, then anything which is not in it is considered to be of the race of barbarians, who deserve nothing less than extermination.

Paul Virilio speaks of Isolation. He writes about computers and their screens saying that these screens are our new horizon. Our new two-dimensional horizon line (8). And I saw an advertisement in an Arab magazine with the slogan Now you can be in two places at the same time (8). I was reading Virilio�s book and I had some work to do on my computer, which now had, as you might have guessed, a totally new meaning for me- my screen became my horizon! A wonderful feeling when one knows for sure that he is not a barbarian. But there was a glitch, a black spot on that Bright New Perpetual Moment I was living. My computer was old. Well, not that old in human-years, I only had it for 2 and a half years, but old, very old in computer-years. The concept is not that new, after all we accept that a dog-year is equal to 7 human-years, and if we make a quick calculation, a computer-year would be equal to 25 or so human-years. So my 2 years 8 months old computer would be around 65-70 years old. The fact that it was old didn�t really bother me, after all we did spend a lifetime together, but it was making a horrific noise, that no human could withstand for more then 5 minutes; it was a drone, deafening hum, which would only cease when I gave my computer a good, swift, whack, to restart again in 30 seconds. I even tried to convince myself that if my screen was my horizon line, then I must be sitting on the new beach of the new globalized world, and what I was hearing was only the soothing sounds of the waves crashing on the rocks beneath me. But to no avail. My human imagination couldn�t keep up the illusion of that bad simulacrum of a wave for more than a fraction of a second.

The experience in itself was a good one, because it gave me a better understanding of the ways of the ancient city I spoke of above, and of its rigid, hierarchical rules. And Paul Virilio couldn�t do anything about that- in fact, the concept of decay is absolutely alien to the computers he speaks of. They seem to float in an a-temporal space, leading an existence similar to that of pictures, but not any pictures, certainly not those paper ones which are bound to turn yellow with time- but more like those digital pictures, the ones that come with the frightening promise that they will never change. Furthermore, the computers/pictures of Virilio do not carry with them the possibility of a �He is dead and he is going to die� (10) instance of recognition. They do not have an anterior future imbedded in them, nothing that gives a human being the possibility of incorporating them in his/her space-time continuum. In a way, and in spite of the fact that they are written, they operate like that enigmatic rectangular object in Stanley Kubrick�s 2001 Space Odyssey, which can be incorporated into our narrative space (after all, it does have the necessary x,y,z coordinates)- but remains outside of it at the same time, as if in space-time bubble of its own.

*********

Coming full circle, I�d say that no direct connection exists between the tooth that I swallowed, my tooth, and Paul Virilio�s computers. I was lying- or perhaps the only possible connection is mediated through the decaying life of my decaying body in this decaying city, which isn�t much really. I sit in my mother�s shop, I sell things to the same people that I�ve known for decades now, and I watch Suzanne, still going to her non-work in the morning. I listen to Fayruz singing

and it scares me.

Tim Etchels, an English performer and a friend wanted me to tell him stories for a performance of his (11), so I told him about the shop and Suzanne, and other things. He used what I�d written, slightly changing it. Now I�m going to re-use and slightly change Tim�s text, or my text seen through Tim�s eyes:

Once upon a time there was a mouth that wouldn�t shut up, in a city that wouldn�t die.

Tony Chakar �

Beirut, 2002.

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