SPATIAL LOCATIONS, VERSION III

Il y a une table, es gibt ein Bett, there is a chair. Not in the ark, there wasn't. Or maybe there was, Genesis doesn't show a record on that subject. (God named heaven and earth, the elements, the flora and man. Man named the animals on the land and the birds in the sky). The objects, apparently, had to speak for themselves. However, in the aftermath of Babel they got caught in the web of forty times forty syntaxes, and their voices have never been heard again. Of what Id are the entities table, bed and chair? What is their specific identity and how are they in the world? Il y a, yes, but what he or it has the table; es gibt, okay, but what 'it' gives the bed; there is, sure, but what is the undifferentiated space articulated by the chair? Neither the French, nor the German, nor the English answer these questions like the objects themselves might. In order to find means to make the objects talk again, we've got to loosen our grip: l'entendement, der Begriff, the apprehension.

When God threw the Book at man, the third time, he did so with chapter 11, foreclosing the free flow of speech, of essay. We might have to backtrace his tracks. We might even have to regress beyond the first time, when he tried to cover up discrepancies in this Bookkeeping; we might have to re-install the distinction between the real and the virtual.

Whether God really exists or not, cannot be determined by reason. There is this fifty-fifty chance. Belief might win you eternal bliss ...if God exists. If he doesn't, you haven't lost anything. Like you wouldn't if you did believe but he didn't exist. On the other hand, if he does exist, and you didn't believe, you have lost. Forever.

This reasoning, known as Pascal's Wager, is characteristic of the Pensée-writer at large. Some 250 years ago Blaise Pascal bet man's spiritual welfare on the assumptions of Christianity. Some 5 years ago Alain Finkielkraut waged man's salvation on the assumptions of Culture. Both, scholars of their times, could not but discover unmarked slopes, yet condemned man to langlaufen. God, Pascal, Finkielkraut and all the other Pensée-writers, became zealous apologists for the preconceived ideas they once unwittingly had endangered by their essayistic nature. Somewhere between the rise and fall of the Pensée, somewhere between God's Genesis and Finkielkraut's Defaite, Pascal knew: "Les extrêmes se touchent."

My name is Room, but I don't know what that means. I have roommates: a chair, a table and a bed. I don't know what that means, and neither do they. I've just told you five stories; I can only hope that I related them accurately. There are plenty more where they come from. Each and every fiber of us is drenched in stories. Many a millenium have we heard them. But we don't know what they mean. So much we have gathered, we are the only remains of a huge floating device. It must have been critical times, back then, because we were hardly addressed or used. That all changed over the ages. When we get yet another visitor, sometimes we recognize the way he puts us to use. That becomes part of our identity, but we don't know what that means, unless that visitor is present. We like that. We like to tell our visitor what he made of us. If he stays long enough, we warm up to the visitor. As long as he uses us. Otherwise we get ill-tempered, but we don't know what that means. We have a question for you. A lot of visitors lament their existence and / or their identity. We hear them say: "If God only had created a room, nothing but a room, and allowed visitors to peep in and say 'Show me your furniture and I'll tell you what you are." What does that mean?!

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