For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins

The tumour, spanning many acres now – many leagues,
fathoms (lots of archaic measurements) – turns over in its
sleep. Sweating. And it begins to snore erratically, air sucked
in past various puddles of various substances of various
viscosities, at least one of which is rainbowed and flammable
– gathered in those rock pools at the threshold of [...]. It’s
an unbearable sound, somewhere between a landslide and a
child grinding their scabbed milk teeth. Somewhere, there’s a
mouth, webbed and underdeveloped. Teeth as stalactites and
-mites at the mouth of a cave used exclusively for the maturing
of a provincial cheese that it’s illegal to carry on public
transport; that, even in the region it hails from, is considered
an acquired taste, and is
commonly sold in openair
markets writhing
with maggots whose
digestive secretions
lend the cheese its
peculiar charac-
ter. Tiny yellow
smears of excres-
cence providing
the sincere tang,
the reverie. It all
proves too much
for us, and we
sprint away from
the fromagerie
giggling with the
scandal. [...] Deeper
inside the cave there’s
a dramatic diorama
of skeleton Neanderthals surrounding, as if in a Nativity,
a smaller skeleton, prone on a great slab of rock, each encircling
Neanderthal plunging a sharpened, now-petrified
stick into what was its abdomen . The scene comes alive in
the flickering light of your flaming torch. [...] Deeper still
is the epiglottis, flexing its cartilaginous wings to usher
you deeper, downwards, through a brawny pothole. There
are taste buds on the epiglottal wings, each one an eyeball
that winces and weeps as you sweep your torch close [...]
(The dreams of the tumour are sluggish things and are generally
banal. Sartorial error, embarrassment in the workplace,