TE23 Double Feature

The Lamentations of Zeno

Ilija Trojanow

cavelets that served as my makeshift chapel— not to God (and how vain a deity to command his name be held so sacrosanct) but to variety and abundance (written out like that the words seem wooden, and it isn’t enough to replace “God” with “Gaia” either). All alone I searched for insight within the clearest and coldest blue, I filled the icy caves with my own variations of the eternal, just like the monks of long ago who filled their stony grottos with drawings, only why didn’t they see the stone itself as a perfect image of God, the weathered surface, the patches of moisture? Deum verum de Deo vero, can truth reside in such a phrase? Within my blue chamber, in the belly of my frosty whale, God has dispensed of every superfluous word. Jeremy is small and rather nondescript, but his glasses make him instantly recognizable wherever he goes, they look like they were lifted from some California comic strip that transforms every polar expedition into a heroic 30

saga, especially those of Ernest Shackleton, whom Jeremy worships above all others, he can give his lecture on Shackleton six times in one season, each one fresher and more original than the last. If they’re not on duty other lecturers will lurk near the door to the auditorium so they can listen for at least a few minutes as Jeremy hoists Sir Ernest to promethean heights (if our Californian whiz kid were looking for spiritual role models he would undoubtedly place Shackleton alongside Isaiah and Jeremiah). He’s seen me writing in my notebook with its heavyweight cover, I don’t try to hide this activity, it’s impossible to keep something like that secret, and anyone who believes otherwise will soon be disabused of the notion, because on board ship everything can be seen and anything seen can also be heard. Jeremy surprised me by placing a handwritten note under the service plate, which I manage to read sometime between hors d’oeuvres and dessert: “Since I see that you, too, are keeping a journal, I feel you 31