My first impression of Philip was that he was blessed with ignorance. But not in the ordinary sense. Philip was a type of aged Wunderkind, a prodigy, at the age of thirty-six and a half. He was not foolish, but he did believe strongly in his own purpose, however strange or indecisive that purpose turned out to be.

'Philip,'� I shouted down the stairs, encouragingly. 'You are undaunted.'�

Philip had a knack for trying to accomplish everything he could, and in the process, achieved nothing.

'Philip,'� I said to him in his big plush burgundy chair. 'Phil: you are undaunted even by death.'� I said this matter-of-factly, due to his unconcern with immortality: he had no urge to leave anything in his past for anyone.

At the moment his fixative mind was on the invention of new words, words that may have been spoken before but always in error, as a slip. His business was making this error into truth, insofar as every possible sound from the human mouth would be deemed a definition for something. Every noise we could enunciate, from a grunt to a guttural cough would be instilled with meaning. First he had to correctly spell the word on post-it-notes and fill out each one with an acceptable definition. These he stuck to objects throughout our apartment, along with the date of definition and his initials. All this he developed in his burgundy chair; a folding card-table was plopped in front of him, a footstool crunched underneath. This definition phase would end within two weeks of the most vehement enthusiasm. It had always progressed this way:

1. Philip conceives an original idea.

2. The original idea consumes him.

3. Believes himself a crucial part of a tradition dating back to Duns Scotus.

4. Transforms his original idea into a codified science.

5. Codified science becomes an infallible system.

6. Close analysis of the system through diligent research of everything obscurely related to the system.

7. Proclaims his discovery the freshest thing to come from the West in over three thousand years.

8. Builds upon his system with smaller systems.

9. Self-doubt informs his work, making it seem to him ridiculous.

10. Depression accompanied with destructive statements concerning self and discovery.

11. Sinks deeper within himself. Says he will never recuperate. Never. Ever.

12. Destroys all evidence that his system ever existed, along with the fragments of the smaller systems within the system.

13. Dies somewhat.

14. Introduction to a decidedly original idea.

15. Euphoria. And on. (See 1)

From the second I acquainted myself with Philip at the Waterhouse Observatory I recognized these traits. But I married him anyway.

Last Tuesday was a week and three days into the definition experiment; I had been marking it in my journal. Philip and I were sitting on the roof of our apartment building. He had months earlier constructed a burlap hammock by stretching it between two poles kept in place with plywood. Our espressos were on the gravel at our feet.

'I wonder,'� Philip said. 'I wonder a lot these days.'� He sat forward, nearly toppling us onto the ground, made curious by his wonderment. 'Because,'� he said, 'with the work I'm doing-' he stopped, wrote something, and stuck the note to his forearm. 'With all of it,'� he said. 'If everything around us suddenly melted into one would there still be sound of some kind?'�

'Reverberations,'� I said.

'Yes. Something like that.'� Very slowly he unpeeled a note. He didn't look away from my eyes as his pen moved.

'Reverberations,'� he whispered. Then feverishly he began tearing the tiny scraps of paper from a stack and setting down observations, laughing at some unforeseen wit and sweating. Philip had descended once more into the trance I have come to understand as his actual self.

I went inside with my espresso and grabbed my journal from a locked cabinet in our bedroom. Carefully, precisely I recorded everything that had taken place just now. That done, I phoned Bob.

'Bob'� He'll be wanting you fairly soon,'� and hung up before Bob could reply.

Bob was Philip's longtime collaborator and personal typist (Philip's range was about three letters a minute). Several years ago Bob had been a short story writer who had met with an inconceivable blankness one day. During the intervening days nothing could remedy the blankness, it simply could not be filled. I believe he captured some comfort and redemption through another's ideas; his secret ghostwriting venture perhaps kept him from scrutinizing too closely his own lack of material.

Philip joined me in the bedroom. I set the journal under the pillow. His body was covered with pink post-it-notes, as though he had contracted some hip, post-modern disease.

'It's all down except the final bit.'�

That 'final bit'� was a conglomeration of something Philip had never grasped, and what caused him, in the end, to relinquish any hope. He was a man without a resolution. Over and over: a brief crescendo, and then, at the last moment a simple case of nothing. What Bob calls an untimely blank.

Philip removed the notes from his body and pasted them around the fireplace with supreme order. I had resumed the entries in my journal. When he followed me into the kitchen I was certain what it meant. He stroked his mustache.

'I know something is missing,'� he said, biting at the stubs that once contained fingernails. 'Something awful,'� he said, 'that will swallow me entirely. Something I can't even approach.'�

'Reverberations,'� I said.

'Yes. Something like that'� But no,'� he trailed off.

'Maybe.'�

'Quite maybe.'� But by then he had stopped listening.

I sat outside on the steps with my cold espresso. A horde of peculiar storm clouds couldn't manipulate the first day of spring. I had violated a serious term Philip set: I held in my hand one of his notes. I'd been made to swear I would under no condition look at any of the evidence he was compiling. The note was in my fist, crushed into a tiny ball. I was just prying my hand apart when Bob appeared at the bottom of the stairs clutching his sacred Olivetti to his chest as though the warm day was about to betray him.

Bob was a barrel of a man. Since the moment he'd been faced with the blankness he'd let himself assume the dress and behavior of someone utterly missing. His red hair had settled on his shoulders and his beard had not been trimmed or tidied in months.

'Looks like rain,'� he said. He stared awkwardly up at me. I never knew what he and Philip did in the confines of Philip's study, but to me, Bob showed only an absence of feeling.

'Looks like that to me,'� I said. Bob huddled on the sidewalk for a moment, then realized he had nothing better to offer and squeezed past me inside. I waited at least forty-five minutes before climbing up to the fourth floor. By then Philip and Bob were locked in the familiar room and spouting the familiar tap tap of demand and typewriter. I could hear their voices faintly in heated disagreement over something I couldn't have cared less about. But I put my ear to the door anyway; intently I listened there anyway.

Bob was thumping the keys in his usual way. They abruptly stopped talking, perhaps sensing the worst. I crept away and resumed my journal.

What I wrote: Philip is unfathomable- an enigma- a many-sided enigma erupting from two selves and wrapped in one. Any action he can possibly make is a mere variation of one or the other self. But unfortunately there is no origin, no departure point. Philip has no initial theme. So I must confess that his being is comprised of two Philips: the one a man I used to know and who's life is the basis of this journal; and the other an inner system who's only joy is the contem-

From where I sat in the kitchen I could distinctly see Bob's protruding head from the doorway of the study. He saw me watching and ducked back. The chatter of typing once again.

It was well into evening when I noticed the silence. I cracked open the door to the study. Bob was sitting behind the typewriter, obviously perplexed and staring straight at me in his awkward way. The window to the right of the desk was shoved up as far as it would go and specks of rain spattered on the sill and across the covers of books. I moved towards it.

'Don't!'� Bob shouted. I recoiled.

'Philip's gone.'�

'He went out the window?'� Philip always went out the window when any catastrophe was particularly vexing.

'Yes.'�

'He climbed down the side of the building again?'�

'Yes.'� Bob started packing his typewriter into the padded interior of a steel case.

'What did he say before he left?'� I asked.

'The usual.'� Bob pondered his exact words. 'That it was all over for him. That nothing was any good any more. It was the end for him.'�

'I can understand-'

'No wait,'� Bob said. He stood. 'He said he loves you and its not you its him. Or maybe it's not him its you.'�

Philip hadn't said that before.

'When?'� I said.

'About ten seconds before you opened the door. Up till then he just paced and cried.'�

'Oh.'�

Bob started for the door, had almost reached when he turned back.

'Jolene'�'� he paused. Something was causing him terrible pain. He winced.

'I didn't want to say anything, but'� I really.'� He looked at my shoes. 'I'm writing a book based on the material Philip has given me in these sessions,'� he blurted. 'I know it isn't right.'� He came over to me suddenly, threw his arms across my shoulders.

'No Bob,'� I said. 'Not at all. Truth is: I'm writing that same book.

He pushed away.

Bob and I talked some more about our prospects and whether or not we were being immoral. It was decided that we were not. I followed him into the street.

A crowd had amassed on the sidewalk. It wasn't necessary to see the victim to know it was Philip. I stood on the outskirts of the crowd next to Bob, and both of us cried a little. We could only speculate if this was an accident or the real thing with a real intention. I took the note out of my pocket, read it, and tossed it on the ground. It was licked away into a gutter.

Bob and I have decided to construct Philip's life. With the odd notes we have collected, comprising the two halves Philip possessed, we will glue the man into a whole; Philip will become in our hands one complete human being from the dozens presented to us daily.

I have thought back to my original impression of Philip and realized that I was only slightly right, but also only slightly wrong. When the book is finished it will be shown that both assumptions are correct.


Copyright  2007 Michael Peck

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