Joshua Cohen - Witz

This is the Market of Spinoza Street, I’m only guessing…and every day’s Market Day in this sewerside moneyslough, this guttersniping remnant of any vanity’s fair. Upon closer inspection — a breakingaway, a crack in the systems — the street below’s paved with gold, which as it’s abundant is worthless, no good here, take it elsewhere. No new business, no today’s concern (only the wind and its witching flies by what passes for night, which is the same as the day if you’re hungry and thirsty and selling), this is a market of ancient standing, still held to only the most paradisiacal of principles: it’s operated & owned by everybody, which is the same as by nobody, really, if more comforting why, and everyone has the opportunity to purchase everything here, to exchange for everything’s what, trading even each other, even themselves — that’s right, step right up: just decide on a price, whether a trade in kith or in kind, a bargainy cutrated, cut your throat deal, whatever you think of as honest, whatever you think of yourself, whoever you are; all’s fair in vanity, every price has its thing. All these refugees forgotten crawled out of the craterous void, clawed straight out of the jaws of cavernous incoherence, theirs, history’s, no one’s — the island apprehended as if a mouth disembodied: these losers, their names at least, their words, flocking here in a great herding of regret left behind (among their losses, bashful sheep, too sheepish to cross; they wait for their shepherds at the sheer edge of the moat — not desperate enough to dare passage, to enter you have to lose everything), here with the idea of redeeming themselves…realizing I’ve heard, actualizing, too, whatever the term, I’ve been told: in new work, new identity, in new family and so, newer hopes, to sell their souls at the going rate gone, dark-marketed to the loss of supply, the malicious gain of demand; though some prefer renting their souls before buying them outright, others lease out only those names theirs and others’, their dates or occupations, on a plan requiring installments lowly a talent or so less than usurious: you might be interested yourself, only if. Isn’t it time for a change? A revolt? This Market’s open all day every day, weekends and holidays and even the Sabbath included. Actually, it itself is every day and all holidays and all Shabboses, Shabbos — all days indeed and their nights, too, you get the idea: the substantive world centrifugalized to its barest essentials, boileddown in the vat of a centripetal hell frozenover. Might as well abandon abandonment, in with the rest: you have to go through to get out to get in…

Welcome, brother comrade, this I think a goy says as he shuffles toward me: thrush’s egg eyes, strawhair, straw coming also out from his shirtsleeves, bulging from the waist and legs of his pants — my name’s…today, I’m not sure; an escapee much like yourself.

He frowns when I don’t say what.

Here, give me a moment, and he goes to search through his pockets, their flax, to find finally a wipe of newsprint, a whimper of magazinestock.

He holds it up to his eyes, reads aloud.

Boris Borisovich Bourgeois, that’s the name…but you can call me Bobo if you have to.

And me, what can I say?

Or Bibi, B.B. or B., up to you…and then, silence, interrupted only by his perk at the wind: interesting that you should ask that question…if you’ll only follow me, and he leads on with confidence, that’s what he thinks I think but I follow — the conviction only to be found when dealing with the negligible, the middling, the though we’re all equal essentially unimportant…leads me as if to the one stall he knows how to find.

This Kapo, he says as we go, he asked me was I dead yet, and so don’t doubt I answer him sure, whatever you want.

I’m no, how do they say — putz.

I fled for moons, you with me — until I come to this moat.

I’d always known about this place, that’s how it feels…but myth’s what I thought, collusion or women’s gossip, impertinence, superstition, a nightmare in which I’m trying to dream. I know how it goes, it’s a merging like water, how all the systems or even, I dunno, dialectics opposed, they eventually flow themselves into one. And so I crossedover, no regrets. I’ve been here ever since, trying out this Bourgeois thing month to month. As far as identities go, it’s as good as any. Tells me how to live. What’s expected, what’s to expect. We pay with our lives for this life, so we’re told. I’m enlightened now, illuminated like you wouldn’t believe. I know what I’m worth. Exploitation of value as a generational thing, forget it. Inheritance has been gotten rid of, maybe for us, maybe by us; we’re remaking ourselves from the ground up, rib by rib, and all of them iron. I’ve lost my chains, my mind withered away with them — I’m crazy united.

By the way, love your horns.

Here’s what I’m thinking: get involved with the masses, go under — you’ll end up discovering yourself. Among others, as others, who not. You’ll be told who you are, who you want to be, all you need. If it doesn’t work out, refunds are refunds — they’re always for sale…as are sales. Call it a revolution, or not, call it whatever you want. We’re trying to figure out what works next. Think about it and get back to me. I’m changing my life, but I’m open.

The explanations seem simple enough, though classless and Forbiddingly capitalized…Spinoza Street’s an infinite street, not that it stretches forever, no, I’m pacing it and myself with these thoughts, stretching afternoons long on metaphysical wander that still call for feet and cold toes: simply, it’s a ring, a street that serpentinely swallows itself, without crossstreet or throughway, and a moat that keeps it an island with its safeguarding freeze. And, as it’s said, if you end up staying here long enough, schnorring what’s necessary to afford your identity, maybe you sell some things of your own to afford yourself others’, the ring ends up seeming so wide, though its width’s strangely as if honestly narrow, that the street seems almost totally straight. Easy, should be. How straight does it seem? Give it up. And of course, the only presence of Spinoza Street is its infamous Market, fairied and storied as the convergence of all cyclical systems: legendarily, how there are no homes here, no schools, neither synagogues, hospitals, cemeteries, nor God forbid churches, just shops, only, stores, really stalls, unremarkable, with the effect that everyone sleeps out in the open, out on the street, in the Market, as the Market, though even then, at night, through its gusts emptying of pocket and heart, and suffused with trashflight, with whirlwinded discard — with a sky entirely dark except for the rise of a lovelost, in the red moon — the Market surely stays open. Forever. But as for the bell hollowly rung time and again, who knows how it’s kept: it signals nothing, is only a bell, merely tolling. Just as advice is the only thing that’s free in this Bourse, the bell’s the only thing that’s not, if that makes any sense…not for sale, not for rental, no money down — though Whose it is, no one knows, even guesses.

People says it’s lawless, without governance, says this Boris Borisovich if that’s still his name the goy he’s still suspectedly talking, and it helps, of course, that I can’t talk back…but I say no, that it’s the culmination of all governance, of all society’s laws, every one — unified at last in a compromise, if you’re free, if your freedom’s amenable. Watereddown, I’m saying. Smelt into One. Either way, the individual doesn’t exist, whether as class or consumer; whether as a true believer impoverished in ideology, or as a cynic whose purpose to keep sane is to keep spending large. Take me for instance. I began as an amateur, a hobbyist, a weekend dabbler in a new doublelife. Traded in to be a professional, then traded up again to become an expert, an expert what, I forget, an expert nonetheless; I was regarded, you know, vetted, peerreviewed and respected, a mind — you don’t believe me? and he produces from his pockets again a forge of documents to prove (relevance, utility) their straw, then asks me to sign for something or other, don’t ask my ask, beseeches then begs me, with the promise of utmost respect for any identity I might manage to organize for myself, to deliver this sheaf of Xs he’s waving in my face to a woman who she’d find me, don’t worry.