1. i'm stupid...

God knows I'm stupid, I've been told often enough. Stupid - I know it, stupid in every fibre of my body, stupid from head to toe. Yes, I am stupid, I have it said to me and I say it myself: I am stupid. What else am I but that - stupid? At least I admit it; at least I shoulder my stupidity. I can declare: I am stupid. It is a fact. The sky is blue; I am stupid. It is February; I am stupid. A fact among other facts and nothing to be done.

Am I stupid? Certainly I am stupid. Am I am an idiot? Certainly that: an idiot, a drooler, that's what I'm good for. They keep me among them for reasons of contrast. I am an idiot, which means they're - not idiots. I am dimmer than any of them, they know that, which is why they keep me amongst them. An idiot - to provide a contrast, a backdrop. Idiocy - that lets their intelligence shine forth all the more splendidly. Idiocy! Foolishness! To let them radiate brilliance in all directions! That is my purpose; I have my place.

Stupid - that's what I am. Stupid through and through and blinking in the sun, lost in my stupidity. Droolingly stupid and lost in it - my stupidity just as the summer road is lost in haze. How vague I am! How lost, how retarded! I'm late for everything, even myself; I lag behind everything, even myself; I drag myself behind myself, every step is an effort. But I am used to it, I know what it is never to arrive all at once - I know that vagueness which dissolves everything.

Stupid - stranded in a past that is not mine. So lost I cannot come to myself. Snagged - but by what? What caught me then, so long ago, before I was born? On what was I caught so that I could not assume my existence? There is something that obsesses me - in my own past. I am writing to uncover it - I'm looking for it, the root of my idiocy, idiocy's radicle. But I can't find it. Where is it buried? Where has it buried me?

Sometimes I dream I've found it in the earth, the root - my idiocy. Sometimes I dreamed I've uncovered the dirt and found him, the non-idiot I also am. There he is, unmoving, pallid, not dead but dreaming just as I am dreaming. I am an idiot - but who is he, the non-idiot? I dream of him and he dreams of me. In another life, I am not an idiot, that's what I tell myself. In another life - but how to find it, the other life?