The Theory of the Thing

an elegy for D.

by Nupur Shah

The Thing is the most difficult of all to theorise about. Because the Thing is beyond language. As such, the Thing is in god. Although, the Thing is not God. But similar to Him, the Thing is made up of too-muchness. 

For the convenience of hypothesis, let us assume that the Thing is a Woman’s Body. 

Also, let the empty space between the theory and the Thing be filled by C.L. 

−

C.L. who is twenty-two has a forest of twenty-two thousand pine trees growing inside her. Why pine trees? One, because they are green evermore, with a single pine capable of staying alive for over four hundred years and from the day C.L. was born, she has only ever wanted one Thing: to never die, so there goes. Two, because pines have elastic hearts, they can convert any season and shape of life into a moist joy by moulding it according to their fancy in the deepest core of their softness. And C.L. likes soft things, as much as she likes her own fancy, which is a sweet, soft thing. C.L. also knows that this moist joy has a name: it is called love which is the third reason why C.L. is a grower of pine trees. This is the fourth reason for pining away : C.L. is that dark bark that she hopes will one day be struck down by a certain carpenter from Nazareth and be furnitured into a selfful of the Thing. 

Because C.L. wants to be furniture in the hands of god, C.L. cannot quite be understood (Spinoza). Another way into the matter is that C.L. cannot be understood because to understand is to forgive and C.L. cannot be forgiven. C.L. is wanting forgiveness, but she will not ask for it, because C.L. is C.L. She craves for forgiveness to be delivered into her bones, but the flesh is always unwilling. Yes, she seeks forgiveness from the stars and the birds, and not for what she is (mind you, Mind), but for having forgotten what she is; for having forgotten that she is the Thing. 

So, at age twenty-two, C.L. is searching for the One who can show her the Thing. Who can be the Thing. The One who will not allow her to forget that she is the Thing and the One who can forgive her for being the Thing. 

This is because the One that C.L. is seeking for is also a Thing made of love. And C.L. knows that only love can love love. But C.L. also knows that the One is not the same as that Nazarene carpenter for whom, in her soul, C.L. is always waiting, wordlessly. Unlike Him, the soft One will love her because it is also made up of the Thing. But the Nazarene could never love her unless she were stripped of her Thing, just like He was. She wants to ask Him: Where is your Thing, god? Have you also forgotten it? Can you forgive yourself for forgetting that to love is to be the Thing? 

But C.L. knows (wise fool) that the only answer she will receive is an unforgivable and unforgettable silence. So instead, she stands awash in this fountain whose waters are being squeezed out of the rock that is her soul. 

—

Since C.L. was three years old, she wanted to eat Things. Although even then, she had begun forgetting that she herself is the Thing, she never forgot that to eat is to be lively. Since the day C.L. was born, aliveness has defined the trope of being C.L. Hence, C.L. has been eating away at Things. Clay, crayons, cardboard, toy cars, Daddy’s cheeks, Ma’s cupboard- everything about C.L.’s world was given meaning along the lines of: eatable/not-yet-eaten/not-to-be-eaten. The latter included the Thing and which is why she began forgetting that she is the Thing herself. Do you want to be a Cannibal? Her mother whispers dreamily. She was taught to nod No, so she shakes her head: Yes, I want to eat human souls. 

So it went on in C.L.’s world until now when she is burning with a wild hunger. There is a too-muchness in this hunger that makes it Wild. It is so bright, this burning, and being so close to her pining heart that she fears the twenty-two thousand trees growing inside it, may be razed to an utter death. Death. She utters the word and the world is brought to a standstill. 

It has been two and a half decades since the trope of aliveness started wreaking havoc in her inner spaces. And yet, today, now, here, this, this Thing is still untouched, untouching, untouchable. Where is the One made of love who shall lift her up in the wings of light and plummet her into the dark depths of the Thing; her Thing; their Thing? Is the One about to fall breathlessly into her extended arms? But these brown logs-her arms are grasping only the white emptiness, grappling with mere nothingness. Her arms stretch out towards the future but all C.L. can see is made up of Time, more and even more Time. It is coming into C.L. as it always has been. But after twenty-two years of always going into it, it seems to C.L., that now it is voiding the Thing into a sad irretrievability. Nothing novel about discovering that one is growing old, but the very universality of its inevitability means that even the One will one day die. This is enough to push C.L. to the edge of bearable consciousness. She doesn’t want to bear Time, that hateful beast who will ravage the Thing of not only C.L. but also of the One into bits of meaninglessness. At twenty-two, Time, that cruel emptier of love’s ocean has already looted C.L. (so she thinkfeels) of the softest edges of the Thing. 

—

 Is this Theory on the Thing an exegesis on waiting? If C.L. could say anything, she’d prefer to be silent. Still like a string long after it has ceased vibrating. And so C.L. too ceases because that’s what she prefers. She is too hungry to go on. Now no more the advent of the One. There is no One. There is only the Thing. Every (forever, now, later, before, after, inside, outside, why, because, no more, still more) thing is the Thing. There can be no other ways. All other ways are shuttered behind C.L.’s closing eyes. Now no more eyes, only the I, her I, as it lodges in the Thing. She—I—dwelling inside her own Thing. Wiggling in between her sweating armpits; craning behind her bent neck; squirting down her shaking thighs; swimming across her spinning brain and coming to settle into the flutter of her receding heart, the Thing finally belongs to her. The Thing, finally, is Her. 

Nupur Shah lives in Mumbai from where she recently graduated with a BA in English.