“Thus we perceive that it can be just as ironic to pretend to know when one knows that one does not know as to pretend not to know when one knows that one knows. Indeed, irony can manifest itself in a more indirect way through an antithetical situation if the irony chooses the simplest and dullest of persons, not in order to mock them but in order to mock the wise…”
Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony (1841)

This absolutely does your head in. You forget what the words like “know” and “irony” mean after reading certain passages. Last night he read this and some other parts out loud while we laid in bed and after a while I stopped listening and instead focussed on the sound of his jaw, which clicks sometimes when he yawns.

This particular bit is from the Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art.

It has been your skin 
since May and I have nothing 
to show for it except bruises
rising like electrodes
on my chest. 

There is never
any sugar under my clothes
though I promised sweetness each time,
like my body could become
an epithet, could be repeated and so
lose meaning, as heavy as Dresden

or Chartres, China blue. When we wait
for each other we are
not modern, we do not know
the ship has sunk, the train has left, 
the light has snapped.
Born overnight and not separated

entirely until morning; globes 
dimming slower and slower;
new blood in new places. 
The narrow stairs and the lock
I forget how to open.

I went to visit one of my old teachers the other day in his office with some banana bread I made. He looks like a wizard and his office has a view of the courtyard where I was groped by a security guard once. We talked for a bit about MONA, John Waters movies, my amazing baking skills and other things while he spun slow circles in his chair. The door to his office was closed and we saw a pair of feet stop in front of it; we could see them under the frosted glass. Suddenly he stopped swivelling and motioned for me to be quiet. We stayed like that for a moment, listening to the person knock and say his name. When they moved on, convinced he wasn’t there, he looked up at me sheepishly. “Sometimes I’m just not in the mood to see my students,” he told me.