Lanny

by Max Porter

I’m a million cameras, even when I’m sleeping, clicking, clicking, every second something is growing and changing. We are little arrogant flashes in a grand magnificent scheme.

Oh fuck off, Robert, I said. Is it beyond your shrunken world view to imagine that something nice might exist without money ever needing to change hands?

Empty, shrunken, hunted. I had horrifying dreams. I felt watched the whole time, judged, and even when I walked out into the fields and woods I felt scrutinised.

I can usually see a way to understand terrible things; Satanic worship, decaffeinated coffee, cosmetic surgery, but Renoir’s portrait of Madame de Bonnières? No. It cannot be understood or forgiven. And framed in gold plastic and spot-lit from above? No offence intended, Charlotte, there is not a chamber of hell hot enough for a woman of your taste.

She’s convinced of a great and unstoppable badness at work in the world. She’s not wrong.

He thinks our souls split off and wander around for a bit, seeing things properly. He thinks we see for the first time how things really work, how close we are to plants, how everything is connected, and we get it, finally, but only for a second. We see shapes and patterns and it’s incredibly beautiful like the best art ever, with maths and science and music and feelings all at once, the whole of everything. And then we just dissolve and become air.

Time’s gone mad. Yesterday feels like weeks ago feels like this morning, it’s all bent and confused.

Sleeplessness does the devil’s joinery,