Gethsemane stared into the distance at Golgatha, who stood at the opposite end of the dusty street. The town was quiet. A shutter blew against the side of one of the unpainted buildings. Both Gethsemane and Golgotha were standing with legs apart, and arms out at their sides. Golgatha flicked open the latch on her pistol’s holster, which didn’t seem to scare Gethsemane, which impressed me, because I am sure that the movement would have provoked me to grab for my gun and draw.
Gethsemane stood at the front of the bleak classroom. The students’ heads were bowed as they were working at their desks. They were working intently, scratching at rough, blue-lined workbook paper. Everything in the room seemed dry… the air seemed dry, the blackboard was dry; Gethsemane’s eyes were dry… and hard. Golgatha was sitting in the last row. She was wearing a blue and white checkered dress. Her black hair was braided in pigtails. Her cheeks were strangely red, as if rouged, although this was not the case. She was not passing notes or twittering or disturbing her neighbors, and yet Gethsemane looked at her with disapproval, and moved in her direction in that very distinctive, disciplinary manner which in itself is a sign of a disciplinary action. Golgatha noticed. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, so there was nothing she could do or not do about it.
Golgatha and Gethsemane stood side by side on the assembly line. Just looking at the two, one could sense a kinship, a comradeship, camaraderie. A supervisor walked by. He grimaced like a bat.
Gethsemane tucked Golgatha in for the night. He stared down at her with infinite human tenderness. She looked up at him with infinite indifference. He stared down her from the limit of human emotional suffering. She looked up at him with bat-filled skull sockets. He stared down at her with the fecundity of a garden, and she stared up at him with what I can only now know as “blank.”
Society and community as relative deterritorialization…Society and community as absolute deterritorialization… Education and labor as relative deterritorialization… Education and labor as absolute deterritorialization.
"If Gherasim Luca’s speech is eminently poetic, it is because he makes stuttering an affect of language and not an affectation of speech. The entire language spins and varies in order to disengage a final block of sound, a single breath at the limit of the cry, JE T’AIME PASSIONNEMENT (‘I love you passionately’)*
Passionne nez passionnem je
Je t’ai je t’aime je
Je je jet je t’ai jetez
Je t’aime passionnem t’aime. " **
* Gilles Deleuze, « He stuttered » from Essays Critical and Clinical, translated by Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco. ** Gherasim Luca’s “Passionnement,” in Le chant de la carpe ( Paris: J. Corti, 1986).