Psychotic Love

Trust me - don't ask why you're here. That's the biggest mistake

In the Maw of the Bed (Source)

I dreamed I was dying in bed, and I tell myself there's no big change here, since I've been living in bed anyway. No pressure. But the bed itself apparently doesn't feel that way. It feels something is wrong. That things can't continue as before. And it starts to press and close in on me. Normally I would get up and straighten it and the rebellious sheets (and the cover that always tries to escape), but now I can't move, not even to show it that I'm looking with a threatening gaze, and it takes advantage of that. And I realize that it's actually taking advantage of the situation in my absence. And who knows what it would do when I'm not there all these years. So now I'll probably find out. And the treacherous bed really starts to close in on me, like lips it starts to suck me, or maybe suck something out of me, that it wants to come out, and it grips me from all sides, even though ostensibly nothing happened and I'm lying innocently, but it feels really not innocent, this sucking of all of me - and I feel something gaping beneath me (I can't look), some dark abyss - and the bed swallows my soul.

And I feel some great fall, a very sharp drop in pretty much everything I am, some infinite forgetting, a dramatic decline in the importance of everything, a loss of moral senses - and it seems there is no bottom, and no bottom to the bottom, and no bottom to the bottom of the bottom, and now there's no doubt that I'm a thousand times lower than before, I'm like a black sun sinking into the earth, like a hole falling into black sand and it can't be stopped. And only then do I realize (you can be really stupid when you're dead): Sheol [the underworld].

And I tell myself okay, at least I've already lost, and there's no need to stress. And I also ask the German next to me if he's stressed, because it scares me that he might have some connection to the Nazis, after all it's a bit suspicious - a German in hell. And the German is happy to talk: You're from Israel? New here? Let me tell you, when you die it's actually a great relief! Never mind the righteous who go to heaven, but nowadays the internalization of sin is so great - that even for the wicked it's a relief to get to hell. Everyone's happy with their lot and there are no problems, not like in the old days in the Middle Ages when there were arguments. Because the main thing is to get what you deserve! And I ask: Not that you should suspect I'm still stuck in the Middle Ages, but how can I know what I deserve? And he says: Everyone here is very professional, no one will do you wrong. You need to trust the system. I know that as a Jew it's a bit hard for you to trust, and it's always important for you to verify that no mistake was made, because every Jew has some inner feeling that he deserves heaven, no matter what he did. But trust me - don't ask why you're here. That's the biggest mistake.

And I move away from this German (what a nation of bookkeepers! No wonder they did the Holocaust) - and it still bothers me. What exactly did I do to deserve hell, after all I haven't left the bed for years and no one has entered. You could say I haven't lived at all (since what happened with her) - so why doesn't my death reflect my life, after all I always thought my life already reflected death. It's a bit unfair. It's, how should I put it, an implausibility in the plot. I mean it seems very artificial from the outside and out of place, and breaks expectations - at least mine, and I'm the main reader, and in fact the only one, of my life, so if it convinces me - apparently some criticism wouldn't hurt. No system is free from errors, no one is an angel. After all, I'm really trying sincerely to be as objective as possible here - and quite succeeding. So I leave the German and turn to the angel of destruction.

And the destructive angel explains to me: Look, Jew, I apologize that you're here among all the Germans, and you didn't even murder. And I say: It's okay, I'm just interested in how you work. I never expected to find myself in hell - it's just interesting. And the destructive angel gets angry: Interesting, huh? Interesting that you're the one talking about interesting. Everyone here becomes an innocent saint, there are more saints here than in heaven. And I don't quite understand: What do you mean? And the angel claps his wings: You, you! You sinned, transgressed, committed crimes, destroyed so much, wasted everything you received, didn't make an effort, thought you knew, wise guy at night. And now you suddenly don't know. Now you remember to be interesting. Really interesting. And I say, even though I'm only half guessing what he's talking about: At least I tried? And the destroyer gets angry: Don't talk to me now about experimentalism. Those excuses don't work in hell. The situation is catastrophic, a spiritual Holocaust, no less, even worse than the physical Holocaust. You caused more cultural damage than Nazism, and now you'll suffer with them together in hell: worthy of each other, a match made in heaven, body and soul. And I'm already asking, more out of curiosity, though also feeling a need (mainly to myself, after all) to play innocent: What did I do?

And the angel loses his composure: We, because you're Jews, still have mercy on you, but you didn't have mercy on the reader. So do you understand why you're here? How obtuse can you be? We need deterrence, against a wave, a flood, a tsunami, a deluge of bad literature and terrible writing that's flooding the Torah, and drowning the heavens, we're choking here. Filthy graphomaniac! Cultural criminal, rapist of verses and murderer of books - there are few who have written worse than you, but no one has written as badly as you. When there's something in time - it's not in place. And when there's something in place - it's not in time. It's impossible to read any book you've written. No one has read. But you kept producing them. The amount of garbage, amateurism, inarticulateness, hollow pretension, desecration of language, licking of speech, and the smell, the smell, the sewage from the mouth... And I cut him off because it's already too hard for me to hear this, and precisely because of that I get worked up (I really would have been ready for any sin - but such an accusation is worse than an accusation of murder!): With all due respect, you're claiming I got to hell - no less - because I wrote poorly?

And the angel of destruction grabs me: Your punishment, vile evildoer, will be to hear all the mistakes you made, all the errors in structure and phrasing and things that don't connect, that you'll regret and never be able to fix again, unclean dead! You ruined the books given to you from heaven. You didn't adhere to the bare minimum. There's no continuity, no story, no characters - and therefore no reader. Plot, lazy one, plot, what every child knows, plot, rotten carcass - and I try to explain: But there's a blood libel plot, a plot that rises from between dreams, that flows between them and through them in the darkness. Can't you see that? And the destructive angel looks at the other one, confused, and asks: Did you understand what he wants? And the other, who is a professional arch-terrorist and archangel says: That's exactly his guilt - that you didn't understand. He managed to confuse even you. Let him go back to the Germans for now, let him suffer from the anticipation of our criticism, from the constant anxiety, from the hovering verdict. This is the torture of spiritual criminals - a literary critic from hell, who will tear him to shreds, make mincemeat out of him and roast him in the inferno. I promise you he'll feel it in his flesh, in his soul, in his spirit! More than any other punishment this will hurt to the very depths of his being and his pathetic roundness. Thus shall be done to the betrayer of Torah, to one who defiled the holy tongue, fornicated with Kabbalah in public, and repeated himself ad nauseam like a dog returning to its vomit - and when no one wanted to publish his stench, he simply published his filth on the internet, to intentionally pollute the spiritual climate. He was given ideas in abundance, and he ruined them all in his corruption, in his disregard, in his lack of seriousness, in self-destruction - the greatest enemy of himself.

And I return to the Germans but dejected and hanging my head - over this final and ultimate heavenly judgment on all my works, which will never have resurrection or remedy. And I think: What grace God did for us by putting the Germans in hell, at least with them I suddenly feel comfortable. It's easy to feel good next to them. And I ask the German with a smile, while fearing to hurt his feelings: What are you actually doing here? And the German is happy with the question, and it seems he's relieved: You probably fear I'm a Nazi. But no! I'm just a leftist German. All Germans go to hell. And this is a punishment we accept gladly - in memory of the six million. And the giant German next to him interjects (hell is crawling with Germans): Don't listen to him, this is a post-war German, their minds are messed up. I ask, indeed rightfully, why do pre-war Germans go to hell? And even I who was there, let me ask you Jew, I'm glad for the opportunity, by the way I personally wasn't anti-Semitic, because luckily I came from a rather enlightened and progressive home, and you tell me: if you were there in my place would you have behaved like me, and murdered like me your own brothers - you would have even murdered yourself. Conclusion: it can happen anywhere and you're no better than me. If you were born German you'd be a Nazi, and if you were born Muslim you'd be Muslim, Christian - Christian. So what meaning is there to your belief, and even the belief (so Jewish, if I may add) that they are wrong and precisely you believe in the truth... There's no meaning to your identity! So what makes you better than me?

And I look at all the Germans around me waiting to hear me, it seems suddenly it's become quiet in hell, and even the post-war German, who wants to apologize for the slanderous words, he too is a bit quiet and waiting for an answer. And I get angry (they've turned me into Yad Vashem here): What secular thinking! Your problem, Herr German, is that you look at the individual, and think there's nothing else, and therefore it seems to you that one can be replaced. But if I were in your place I wouldn't be Jewish but German. Therefore one can't be replaced, because it wasn't the individual who arose and carried out the Holocaust, but your culture. German culture was capable of murdering Jewish culture, and even proved it, and Jewish culture was not capable. That's the difference between us, and that's what bothers you, that's why you always want me to turn out to be a murderer. The German dream is for there to be a Holocaust carried out by Jews. So I have nothing against you personally, my hell-mate, but it turns out - to me too, believe me - that there's no forgiveness and no atonement for cultural crimes. That's the divine logic. For personal, random crimes, God forgives. And if only I had known I would have committed adultery instead of writing. At least I would have enjoyed myself. And not shut myself in bed after she left me alone in bed.

And the German twists his face (which had looked twisted to me even before) and gets angry at me: Leave me alone with these Jewish complexes. What am I guilty of? That I was born German. That's the height of racial theory! And I get even angrier than him (suddenly I realize he's put me in the place of an angel of destruction): It's true that you as a physical body are not responsible for anything, because different software in the hardware would have turned you into someone else, and if you were born Jewish you wouldn't be a murderer. But understand, you are not your body, that's a false positioning of things - certainly here in the world of truth - but your culture. True, if I had been born into Hitler's family and not the Schwartz family, as Mr. Round Hitler, maybe I would have been a murderer, and therefore the individual is not punished, but Hitler's family - Hitler's culture - and you are part of it. The culture is punished according to the sins of its children, exactly as the Divine Presence was exiled because of us. And if they hanged you after a trial - they didn't hang the body, because the body remains, and they didn't hang the individual either, but they hanged the expression of the murderous culture. And that's exactly what you, sir, the secular, modern, post-Protestant, don't understand, and that's why you're in hell: there is no individual. Because the fact is you behaved as part of a culture, after all a German is a cultured person, no? And the German makes a very uncultured face, and I say: You know what, if murder is a sensitive topic for you, let's take rape as an example. There is no rapist - there is rape culture, expressed in a specific rapist, and that's what's punished in prison. It's a cultural war. And therefore it doesn't matter if your evil is banal or not, because we look at the evil in the culture, for example at the infinite graphomania of the People of the Book, which degraded me and ruined my life. I personally might have been able to err and believe in Hitler - but Jewish culture cannot err in this, and indeed it does not believe in Hitler. I might have been able to be secular - but religion could not be secular. It's not you the German in hell - it's the Germans in hell. So take it like a German, like a man, and stop whining like a Jew!

And the German brute actually smiles (it seems half of Deutschland has gathered around us): So if it's not personal - why are you so angry? Why do you care that you're in hell? And I try to answer him, and all of hell: It's not you who angers me. I, I anger myself. I'm angry at this individualistic perception, so secular, that ruined everything. Everything. You want to know why I'm in hell? I, I made a mistake. But they would have forgiven me for that. The problem is that I - am a mistake. My self, so self-absorbed, is the mistake of my culture, meaning my real mistake, and it was my mistake with her. It - not I. I mean - ugh. You know what, if you don't understand, want another example? Let me tell you, so all of hell will hear, here I confess my sins: What did I do with a psychotic? And I try to speak to the German's heart. Suddenly I so want this great scoundrel to understand me - to understand what I did with a psychotic. How I - with a psychotic. Maybe I'll even answer myself: What did I do with a psychotic?

And I try to explain to him, because maybe precisely he, precisely in hell, will be able to understand: Everything with her was psychotic. In the good sense of the word. If there is such a sense. But there was such a sense - because everything with her was psychotic. And sometimes I remember how everything was. But I'm no longer able to understand it without her. The world had a different color, green maybe. Like her eyes. But even the color doesn't say anything, because the green was psychotic. That's what a relationship with a psychotic gives you - the world becomes psychotic. It's not just another person - it's another world. Sometimes it seems to me that I miss that green world much more than I miss her. I loved it so much. But today I can no longer understand why I loved it so much. And how it's possible that I loved her so much. From her perspective of course the psychotic world wasn't psychotic but normal. Because she was psychotic. And precisely because of that from her perspective - I was the psychotic one.

And the German is quite frightened by the sudden personal revelation that fell to his lot, this is not what he expected, it's so out of place - and if there's something the German doesn't like: it's when something is out of place. And I say to him (now I really feel psychotic, like before, after I already thought I'd forgotten how it is): Now do you understand that it's not the individual? It's the world. The world was psychotic, it really was another world, that I no longer understand, am no longer able to understand at all - even myself. That's why God doesn't judge the person on Rosh Hashanah - but the world. So enough already with this sick individualism, understand, understand - it's not the individual! If I'm a complete idiot who ruined his life - it's not me. If I'm in pain over her - it's not me. I'm in pain over her is a state of affairs in the world. It's an equation with two unknowns. You can put yourself in my place when you read this - and you too will be in pain over her. Literature is the equation that allows the reader to become x. And me to become y. It allows you to become Jewish if you read Jewish literature, or German if you read German literature, literature allows you to become psychotic, or secular, or a cat, or religious, or a black hole. And it allows me to reach hell.