What I can’t tolerate is fuss. The object is mute, it’s without any fuss.
There was a gaze of the atmosphere of the room upon me. I felt that gaze like a mysterious comfort.
As for how the rotation of the stars produces the inertia of my ashtray — explain it if you can.
AUTHOR: Angela sometimes nauseates me like a chocolate ice-cream soda.
ANGELA: The retch of perplexity.
The sky is concentrated air. It’s the void.
Rotten wood.
Careful, Nature thinks.
AUTHOR: Careful with what? and what does she mean Nature thinks? She’s out of her mind.
ANGELA: If you think we’re made of wax you’re gonna pay.
AUTHOR: For those who write, an idea without words is not an idea. Angela is full of pre-words and unconscious auditory visions of ideas. My job is to cut out her drivel and leave behind only what she at least manages to stammer.
ANGELA: Man sits. Why? Is sitting down something we’ve acquired slowly through process across millennia? Or is it part of human nature? As it’s in a bird’s nature to fly? Lying down is different: except for feathered creatures, every animal lies down.
I sometimes feel such pity for “things.” That small table with the marble top, poor thing so cold and white and pale and proud in vain. It thinks it’s noble. And my trash basket full of paper, so elegant and simple, woven from strips of wood but what’s the point of its beauty if it’s always on the floor, always full of the crumpled paper of the letters I didn’t send.
Farewell, oh thing.
I’m leaving for when-hell-freezes-over.
AUTHOR: Angela lacks the creative ambition that is made of a hunger that is never satisfied.
Discovering a new way to live. I believe that the key lies in seeing the thing in the thing, without going beyond or behind it, outside its context. The result of such a new way of looking at the passing moment is often to wonder at a thing as if we were seeing it for the first time. Seeing the thing in the thing hypnotizes the person looking at the dazzling object seen. There is an encounter between me and that thing vibrating in the air. But the result of that gaze is a sensation of hollowness, empty, impenetrable and of full mutual recognition. God forgive me I believe I’m rambling on about the nothing. But I’m sure of one thing, this nothing is the best character in a novel. In the void of the nothing facts and things insert themselves. What you see in this way of transforming everything absolutely into the present state, the result is not mental: it is a mute form of feeling absolutely untranslatable by words.
I’m only going to reread superficially what I’ve already written and what Angela wrote because I don’t want to influence myself, I don’t want to copy. I don’t want to imitate even the truth. Perhaps by reading only superficially what’s already been written will I lose the thread and everything will come out fragmentary and disconnected. Or maybe it’s disconnected because I speak of one thing that belongs to my path, while Angela speaks of another thing that belongs to her destiny. But, though I am fragmentary and dissonant and out of tune, I believe there exists in all this a hidden order. And! There exists a will.
AUTHOR: I’m in love with a character I invented: Angela Pralini. Here she is speaking:
ANGELA: Ah how I would like a languid life.
I am one of the interpreters of God.
AUTHOR: When Angela thinks of God, is she referring to God or to me?
ANGELA: Who makes my life? I feel that someone is ordering me around and fating me. As if someone were creating me. But I am also free and don’t obey orders.
AUTHOR: I’ve been drinking too much. When you drink, you end up with a naked subconscious and can only feel, feel, feel. God is a thing you breathe. I don’t have faith in God. Luck is sometimes not having faith. Because that way one day you can have The Great Surprise of those who don’t expect miracles. It seems moreover that miracles happen like manna from heaven especially for those who believe in nothing. And those people don’t even realize that they were singled out. I’ve grown tired of asking. For the miracle to happen you have to not expect it. I want nothing more.
I am the night and He is the firefly.
The theme of my life is the nothing.
Reality is very strange, it’s entirely unreal. Why hast thou forsaken me, my God? I live my life apologizing and giving thanks.
Angela gave God the power to cure her soul. It’s a God of great utility: for when Angela feels God then the terribly exposed truth is immediate. Angela uses God to breathe. She divides God to use Him as her protection. Angela is not a mystic and doesn’t even see the golden light in the air.
ANGELA: I wanted to lead an ascetic life, of purification, of exclusive contact with the beyond. But how? If at the same time I want money for my comforts, I want a man for my sensuality, I want the precious stones that are the gem of the earth and that are for that reason also sacred? My duality surprises me, I’m dizzy and unhappy. At the same time it’s a richness to have the element sky-air and the element earth-love, without one getting in the way of the other.
The moment I grasp myself — I shall have reached eternity no matter how ephemeral.
God was not made for us. We are the ones who were made for Him. What we must do, though He doesn’t care for us, is adore Him and in the worst circumstances fill our hearts with the pleasure of praising Him.
AUTHOR: A man imagined God and made a chair, in that chair there must be a bit of that man’s energy. Such is the spirit of made things, lived things.
I invented God — and don’t believe in Him. It’s as if I had written a poem about the nothing and then suddenly found myself face-to-face with the nothing itself. Is God a word? If so then I’m full of Him: thousands of words crammed inside a jar that’s shut and that I sometimes open — and I am dazzled. God-word is dazzling.
ANGELA: Sometimes, just to feel myself living, I think about death. Death justifies me.
An object ages because it has within it dynamics.
Instead of saying “my world,” I say audaciously: the world depends on me. Because if I don’t exist, the Universe ceases within me. Could it be that abstraction begins after death?
I, reduced to a word? but what word represents me? I know one thing: I am not my name. My name belongs to those who call me. But, my intimate name is: zero. It is an eternal beginning permanently interrupted by my awareness of beginning.
God is neither the beginning nor the end. He is always the middle.
AUTHOR: I participate in Angela’s shaking restlessness but do not imitate her.
ANGELA: I’m weak, dubious, there’s a charlatan inside me though I tell the truth. And I feel guilty about everything. I who have crises of rage, “sacred rage.” And I can’t find the refuge of peace. For pity’s sake, let me live! I ask for little, it’s almost nothing but it’s everything! peace, peace, peace! No, my God, I don’t want peace with an exclamation mark. I want only this minimum: peace. Just so, very, very slowly . . . like this . . . almost asleep . . . that’s right . . . that’s right . . . it’s almost coming . . . Don’t frighten me, I am terribly frightened.
He is the well-applied word. And I rolling through space like a baby without gravity. Where’s my gravity? Or are you supposed to say gravitation? Do me a favor, give me somewhere to land. I’m not someone to believe in. But to imagine without managing to. It makes me want to talk wrong. Like: Dog. That means God.
AUTHOR: Angela doesn’t know how to live gradually: she wants to eat life all at once. And so she’s got empty time left over. The meditation inside the emptiness is what she manages, being at the last human stage before our lives that are without exception glorious.
Solitary eagle.
Living is a hobby for her. She thinks it has nothing to do with her and lives tossed to the side, without past or future; just today forever.
ANGELA: Is what’s happening to me Grace? Because my body I don’t feel it, it doesn’t weigh me down, it doesn’t desire, the sp
irit neither strains nor searches, a luminous aura of silence envelops me: I hover in the air, free of time but fully in this very moment, without before or after. I greet myself and the world does not touch me. For me to be two and for there to be the participation of this state, I look at myself in the mirror, I look at the other of me. And I see that my fluid appearance has the loveliness of the floating human face. Then I feel with a most delicate pleasure that I’m whole. And an air of truth. I am finally barefoot.
I did what was most urgent: a prayer.
I pray to find my true path. But I discovered that I don’t give myself entirely to the prayer, I seem to know that the true path is with pain. There is a secret and to me incomprehensible law: only through suffering does one find happiness. I fear myself because I’m always ready to be able to suffer. If I don’t love myself I’ll be lost — because no one loves me to the point of being I, of being me. I must want myself in order to give something to myself. Must I be worth something? Oh protect me from myself, who persecutes me. I’m worth something in relation to others — but in relation to myself, I am nothing.
It’s so good to have someone to ask for things. It doesn’t even bother me much if my requests aren’t totally satisfied. I ask God to make me prettier — and isn’t it true that my eye shines as my lips seem fuller and sweeter? I ask God for everything I want and need. That’s what I can do. Whether my prayers are answered — that’s not up to me, that’s already the matter-magic that either gives itself to me or withholds itself. Stubborn, I pray. I don’t have the power. I have the prayer.
AUTHOR: I’m so in contact with God that I don’t even need to pray. It’s natural that Angela resembles me a bit. I’ve even infected her with the mysterious belief I have.
I am afraid to be who I am.
There is a total silence within me. I get scared. How to explain that this silence is what I call the Unknown. I’m afraid of It. Not because It could childishly punish me (punishment is something people do). The fear comes from what surpasses me. And that also is me. Because my greatness is great.
I don’t live dangerously in facts. I live in extreme danger when alone I fall into deep meditation. That is when I dangerously become free even of God. And free even of me. At the edge of a precipice dumbstruck on the dry height of a cliff. And as a living thing beside me — only the cactus with its crown of thorns of a nature that forsook me. I am alone from myself.
I constantly got lost inside me. I need the patience of a saint. I am a man who chose silence. I had to love a pure being.
Ah, melancholy of having been created. I’d rather have stayed in the immanescence of nature. Ah, divine wisdom that makes me move without knowing what legs are for.
Does God know He exists?
I think God doesn’t know He exists. I’m almost certain He doesn’t. And hence His powerful strength.
I cried a lot today and my eyes got swollen and red. But it was worth it. I don’t even wonder why I cried.
The worst part is that I’m vice versa and zigzag. I’m inconclusive. But I have to love myself the way I involuntarily am. I only take responsibility for what’s voluntary in me and that is very little.
I do not understand, therefore I believe. I believe “in what.”
Do you know what God is? God is time. I’m barely a part of this itinerary heading toward Nothing. I wonder with an already rather morbid insistence why was I born. I swear it’s not worth the bother for anyone to be me. As for Angela, she keeps up with fashion. For example: people talk a lot these days about “human condition,” “existence,” “aura.” Why the devil doesn’t she instead of wanting to dominate objects dedicate herself to figuring out if an insect is male or female? Women have that problem, keeping up with fashion. I don’t know what the fashion is now but I know it’s time for sex and violence. I myself only watch horror films. There’s a cold war that’s finishing me off.
Time is the indefinable. I quickly put myself in time, before dying. Life is very quick, when you see it, you’ve reached the end. And to top it off we’re required to love God.
There’s a narrow passage inside me, so narrow its walls wound me all over, but that passage leads to the breadth of God. I don’t always have the strength to cross this bloody desert, even knowing that, if I force myself to hurt all over between the walls, even knowing that I’ll come out into the open light of a day trembling with gentle sunshine.
ANGELA: I went trembling to encounter myself — and found a silly woman flailing between the walls of existence. I smash the floodgates and create myself anew. And then I can meet I, on equal footing.
Did I consecrate myself to God?
AUTHOR: I, vigilant as a lit candle. Watching over the mysteries of Angela.
Angela doesn’t know how to define. That’s why for her the world is much vaster than mine. Not that I know how to define but I’m aware of the limits and limiting yourself makes a possible definition easier.
Angela has a gift that I find very moving: the gift of error. Her whole life is a big mistake. The way she realizes that something inside her is wrong, and very gravely wrong is her anxiety, her permanent suspicion. She lives askance. Another way she feels that there’s a fundamental error in her life is through her humility and her innocence. The wicked are the ones who must be forgiven. The innocent have forgiveness within themselves.
I do not approve of myself because I can hardly stand to live with myself. I do almost the impossible to be exempt. Exempt from myself. I’m almost reaching that state of blessedness.
ANGELA: Today I bought a long dress with tones of emerald-green, scarlet-red, loud-white, severe-black, king-blue, insane-yellow.
God is like listening to music: He fills the being.
AUTHOR: She doesn’t seem to have what one might call “elevated feelings.” She’s selfish and covetous. She won’t let anyone go partly out of love, partly because she doesn’t know how to break things off — but partly because of the nearly luxurious material comfort people give her. She’s happy in the diamonds she receives from time to time.
She’s not immobile: her active imperfections give her great mobility. It’s in sin itself that Angela encounters her God. She’s frivolous. Everything she touches turns frivolous. But when I tell her that, she answers with a text she copied from Reader’s Digest: “Joseph Haydn, criticized for the lightness of his music, smiled: I cannot make it otherwise; I write according to the thoughts I feel. When I think upon God, my heart is so full of joy that the notes dance and leap, as it were, from my pen; and since God has given me a cheerful heart, it will be pardoned me that I serve Him with a cheerful spirit.”
I’ve discovered why I breathed life into Angela’s flesh, it was to have someone to hate. I hate her. She represents my terrible faith that is reborn every single morning. And it’s frustrating to have faith. I hate this creature who simply seems to believe. I’m sick of her empty God that she fills up with nervous ecstasies. When did the hate in me start to happen and live? And I get all dizzy with the effluvia of a sentiment I ignored in myself for as long as I can remember.
Could it be that I want Angela Pralini in order to develop a feeling that is ardent and sleepless, the feeling of hatred I now need to exercise because she taught me to hate? Are we forever attached? I want her. I know that one day I’ll leave her, but my fear is that I won’t forget her and shall ever bear that dark stain on my soul. This soul that’s always surprised by the novelty of feeling.
For I bathe entirely in that devouring darkness, I want to know the depth of my hatred. I want to know every feeling. Must a person have experienced this cursed power in order to be a complete person? I don’t know, but it’s demonic.
I’m making a shameful confession: it’s good to hate her. My soul, a potential murderer, knows therefore the rich darknesses of blood, and what I know makes me feel the worst of myself. And, yes, the murderous soul is rich. I sometimes wonder if she wants me to kill her to bring me to the summit of my hatred. It’s better to forg
et her because otherwise my own blood begins to hurt me and I’ll be filled with a black revolt without at least knowing what I’m revolting against, that’s a lie I know quite well what I’m revolting against. But it’s something that can’t be said.
I get tense thinking of the kind of relaxation in which Angela lives. I can’t reach her — now she escapes me, now she’s close at hand — and when I think she’s within my reach, she rebels, intrinsic.
Time is not measurable.
Angela makes no plans. And she scares herself because she’s always a novelty. Sometimes she takes refuge in an impenetrable nest. For example: just now I lost sight of her and don’t know where she lives (hidden within me in a dark corner of mine?). And I no longer know what she’s going to say. I trust in her unpredictable drive.
Angela Pralini is sometimes unfettered and slightly sharp like the voices of singing boys performing Bach cantatas, or a chorus of monks. Angela is my vocal exercise.
Angela, I don’t know how to tell you and begin, without hurting you. But I can’t stand you anymore. I’m going to invent another woman quickly. One who won’t be magical like you, one in whom I can go about walking the earth and eating meat. I want a real woman. I’m tired of lying.
I’m going to invent a whole woman, who’s organized and logical, who has a propensity like that of a surgeon. Or even a lawyer. And who in bed is limpid and without sin. I’m going to live with her. I’d feel more secure than I do with Angela. What wears me out is that she’s impossible to domesticate. There’s a false balance of contrary forces. She’s afraid — with good reason — of living moment to moment, crippled in spirit. What can I do if she’s anarchical?
Except imitate her since she’s stronger than I: I am the product of a thought, she is not a product: she is all herself. She shattered my system. She’s my ancestor and such my pre-history that she manages to be inhuman, though she writes with false order.