And now it was as if I were before Him and didn’t understand — I was standing uselessly before Him, and I was once again before the nothing. To me, as to everyone, everything had been given, but I wanted more: I wanted to know about that everything. And I had sold my soul in order to find out. But now I was understanding that I had not sold it to the devil, but much more dangerously: to God. Who had let me see. Since He knew that I would not know how to see whatever I saw: the explanation of an enigma is the repetition of the enigma. What art Thou? and the answer is: Thou art. What do Thou existest? and the answer is: what thou existest. I had the ability to ask the question, but not to hear the answer.
No, I had not even known how to ask the question. Yet the answer had imposed itself upon me since I was born. Because of this continual answer I, the wrong way around, had been forced to seek the corresponding question. So I had got lost in a labyrinth of questions, and asked questions at random, hoping that one of them would occasionally correspond to the answer, and that I could then understand the answer.
But I was like a person who, having been born blind and not having anyone around who could see, that person could not even form a question about vision: she wouldn’t know that seeing existed. But, since vision actually did exist, even if that person didn’t know about it and had never even heard of it, that person would be motionless, restless, alert, not knowing how to ask about something she didn’t know existed — she would feel the lack of something that should have been hers.
She would feel the lack of something that should have been hers.
— No. I didn’t tell you everything. I still wanted to see if I could get away with only telling myself a little. But my liberation will only come about if I have the immodesty of my own incomprehension.
Because, sitting on the bed, I then said to myself:
— They gave me everything, and just look what everything is! it’s a roach that is alive and that is about to die. And then I looked at the door handle. After that I looked at the wood of the wardrobe. I looked at the glass of the window. Just look at what everything is: it’s a piece of thing, a piece of iron, of gravel, of glass. I said to myself: look what I fought for, to have exactly what I already had, I crawled until the doors opened for me, the doors of the treasure I was seeking: and look what the treasure was!
The treasure was a piece of metal, it was a piece of whitewash from the wall, it was a piece of matter made into roach.
Since prehistory I had started my march through the desert, and without a star to guide me, only perdition guiding me, only going astray guiding me — until, almost dead from the ecstasy of fatigue, illuminated by passion, I finally found the safe. And in the safe, sparkling with glory, the hidden secret. The most remote secret in the world, opaque, but blinding me with the irradiation of its simple existence, sparkling there with glory that hurt my eyes. Inside the safe the secret:
A piece of thing.
A piece of iron, a roach’s antenna, a plaster chip.
My exhaustion was prostrate at the feet of the piece of thing, hellishly adoring. The secret of power was power, the secret of love was love — and the jewel of the world is an opaque piece of thing.
The opacity was reverberating in my eyes. The secret of my millennial trajectory of orgy and death and glory and thirst until I finally found what I had always had, and for that I had had to die first. Ah, I am being so direct that I manage to seem symbolic.
A piece of thing? the secret of the pharaohs. And for that secret I had almost given my life . . .
More, much more: to have that secret, that even now I still did not understand, I would give my life again. I had risked the world in search of the question that follows the answer. An answer that was still a secret, even once the corresponding question was revealed. I had not found a human answer to the enigma. But much more, oh, much more: I had found the enigma itself. I had been given too much. What would I do with what had been given to me? “May the holy thing not be given to the dogs.”
And I was not even touching the thing. I was just touching the space that goes from me to the vital node — I was within the zone of cohesive and controlled vibration of the vital node. The vital node vibrates at the vibration of my arrival.
My greatest possible approach stops a step away. What prevents that step from being taken? It is the opaque irradiation, simultaneously from the thing and from me. Because we are similar, we repel one other; because we are similar we cannot enter the other. And if the step were taken?
I don’t know, I don’t know. Since the thing can never really be touched. The vital node is a finger pointing at it — and, the thing being pointed at, wakens like a milligram of radium in the tranquil dark. Then the wet crickets are heard. The light of the milligram does not alter the dark. Because the dark is not illuminable, the dark is a way of being: the dark is in the vital node of the dark, and you cannot touch the vital node of a thing.
Would the thing for me have to reduce itself to being just whatever surrounds the untouchable part of the thing? My God, give me what Thou hast done. Or hast Thou already given it to me? and I am the one who cannot take the step that will give me what Thou hast done? Am I what Thou hast made? and I cannot take the step toward me, me that art Thing and Thou. Give me what Thou art in me. Give me what Thou art in others, Thou art the he, I know, I know because when I touch I see the he. But the he, the man, takes care of what Thou hast given him and covers himself in a casing made especially for me to touch and see. And I want more than the casing that I love too. I want what I Thee love.
But I had only found, beyond the casing, the enigma itself. And was trembling all over for fear of the God.
I tremble in fear and adoration of whatever exists.
Whatever exists, and which is just a piece of thing, yet I must place my hand over my eyes against the opacity of that thing. Ah, the violent loving unconsciousness of whatever exists surpasses the possibility of my consciousness. I am afraid of so much matter — the matter vibrates with attention, vibrates with process, vibrates with inherent present time. Whatever exists beats in strong waves against the unbreakable grain that I am, and that grain whirls between abysses of calm billows of existence, it whirls and does not dissolve, that grain-seed.
What am I the seed of? Seed of thing, seed of existence, seed of those very billows of neutral-love. I, person, am an embryo. The embryo is only sensitive — that is its only particular inherence. The embryo hurts. The embryo is eager and shrewd. My eagerness is my most initial hunger: I am pure because I am eager.
Of the embryo that I am, this joyful matter is also made: the thing. Which is an existence satisfied with its own process, deeply occupied with no more than its own process, and the process vibrates entirely. That piece of thing inside the safe is the secret of the coffer. And the coffer itself is also made of the same secret, the safe holding the jewel of the world, the safe too is made of the same secret.
Ah, and I don’t want any of this! I hate what I managed to see. I don’t want that world made of thing!
I don’t want it. But I cannot help feeling all enlarged inside myself by the poverty of the opaque and the neutral: the thing is alive like weeds. And if that is hell, it is heaven itself: the choice is mine. I am the one who shall be demonic or angel; if I am demonic, this is hell; if I am angel, this is heaven. Ah, I send my angel to prepare the path before me. No, not my angel: but my humanity and its compassion.
I sent my angel to prepare the path before me and to let the stones know of my coming and for them to soften before my incomprehension.
And my gentlest angel was who found the piece of thing. It couldn’t find anything except what it was. Since even when something falls from the sky, it is a meteorite, that is, a piece of thing. My angel lets me be the worshipper of a piece of iron or glass.
But I am the one who must stop myself from giving a name to the thing. The name is an accretion, and blocks contact with the thing. The name of the thing is an interval for the thing.
The desire for the accretion is great — because the naked thing is so tedious.
Because the naked thing is so tedious.
Ah, so that was why I had always had a kind of love for tedium. And a continual hatred of it.
Because tedium is saltless and resembles the thing itself. And I had not been great enough: only the great love monotony. Contact with supersound of the atonal has an inexpressive joy that only flesh, in love, tolerates. The great have the vital quality of flesh, and, not only tolerate the atonal, they aspire to it.
My old constructions had consisted in continually trying to transform the atonal into tonal, in dividing the infinite into a series of finites, and without noticing that finite is not a quantity, it is a quality. And my great discomfort in all that had been feeling that, no matter how long the series of finites, it did not exhaust the residual quality of the infinite.
But tedium — tedium had been the only way I could feel the atonal. And I just had not known that I liked tedium because I suffered from it. But in living matter, suffering is not the measure of life: suffering is the fatal by-product and, no matter how sharp, is negligible.
Oh, and I who should have noticed all that long before! I, who had as my secret theme the inexpressive. An inexpressive face fascinated me; the moment that was not the climax attracted me. Nature, what I liked about nature, was its vibrating inexpressiveness.
— Ah, I don’t know how to tell you, since I only get eloquent when I err, error leads me to argue and think. But how to speak to you, if there is a silence when I get it right? How to speak to you of the inexpressive?
Even in tragedy, since the true tragedy is in the inexorability of its inexpressiveness, which is its naked identity.
Sometimes — sometimes we ourselves manifest the inexpressive — one does that in art, in bodily love as well — to manifest the inexpressive is to create. In the end we are so so happy! since there is not just one way of entering into contact with life, there are even negative ways! even painful ones, even almost impossible ones — and all that, all that before dying, all that even while we are awake! And there is also sometimes the exasperation of the atonal, which is of a deep joy: the exasperated atonal is the flight taking off — nature is the exasperated atonal, that was how the worlds formed: the atonal got exasperated.
And consider the leaves, how green and heavy they are, they got exasperated in thing, how blind the leaves are and how green they are. And feel in the hand how everything has a weight, the weight does not escape the inexpressive hand. Do not awaken the person who is entirely absent, who is absorbed is feeling the weight of things. Weight is one of the proofs of the thing: only things with weight can fly. And the only things that fall — the celestial meteorite — are those that have weight.
Or is all that still me wanting the delight of the words of things? or is that still me wanting the orgasm of extreme beauty, of understanding, of the extreme gesture of love?
Because tedium is of a too primary joy! And that is why heaven is intolerable to me. And I don’t want heaven, I miss hell! I’m not up to staying in heaven because heaven has no human taste! it has the taste of thing, and the vital thing has no taste, like blood in my mouth when I cut myself and suck the blood, I am frightened because my own blood has no human taste.
And mother’s milk, which is human, mother’s milk is much before the human, and has no taste, it is nothing, I already tried it — it is like the sculpted eye of a statue that is empty and has no expression, since when art is good it is because it touched upon the inexpressive, the worst art is expressive, that art which trangresses the piece of iron and the piece of glass, and the smile, and the scream.
— Ah, hand holding mine, if I hadn’t needed so much of myself to shape my life, I would already have had life!
But that, as far as humans are concerned, would be destruction: living life instead of living one’s own life is forbidden. It is a sin to enter the divine matter. And that sin has an irremediable punishment: one who dares to enter this secret, in losing individual life, disorganizes the human world. I too could have left my solid constructions in the air, even knowing that they were dismantlable — if not for the temptation. And the temptation can keep one from crossing to the other shore.
But why not stay inside, without trying to cross to the opposite shore? Staying inside the thing is madness. I do not want to stay inside, or else my previous humanization, which was so gradual, would come to have had no basis.
And I do not want to lose my humanity! ah, losing it hurts, my love, like casting off a still-living body and that refuses to die like the severed pieces of a lizard.
But now it was too late. I would have to be greater than my fear, and I would have to see what my previous humanization was made of. Ah, I must believe with so much faith in the true and hidden seed of my humanity, that I must not fear seeing humanization from the inside.
I must not fear seeing humanization from the inside.
— Give me your hand once again, I still don’t know how to comfort myself about the truth.
But — sit with me for a moment — the greatest lack of belief in the truth of humanization would be to think that the truth would destroy humanization. Wait for me, wait: I know that later I’ll know how to fit all this into daily practicality, don’t forget that I too need a daily life!
But see, my love, the truth cannot be bad. The truth is what it is — and, exactly because it is immutably what it is, it must be our great security, just as having desired our father or mother is so inevitable that it must have been our foundation. So then, understand? why would I be afraid of eating the good and the evil? if they exist that is because that is what exists.
Wait for me, I know I’m heading for some thing that hurts because I am losing others — but wait for me to go a little further. From all that, perhaps, a name could be born! a name without word, but that might implant the truth in my human makeup.
Don’t be afraid as I am afraid: it cannot be bad to have seen life in its plasma. It is dangerous, it is sinful, but it cannot be bad because we are made of that plasma.
— Listen, don’t be afraid: remember that I ate of the forbidden fruit and yet was not struck down by the orgy of being. So, listen: that means I shall find even greater refuge than if I had not eaten of life. . . . Listen, because I dived into the abyss I started to love the abyss of which I am made. Identity can be dangerous because of the intense pleasure that could become mere pleasure. But now I’m accepting loving the thing!
And it’s not dangerous, I swear it’s not dangerous.
Since the state of grace exists permanently: we are always saved. All the world is in a state of grace. A person is only struck down by sweetness when realizing that we are in grace, the gift is feeling that we are in grace, and few risk recognizing that within themselves. But there is no danger of perdition, I know now: the state of grace is inherent.
— Listen. I was only used to transcending. Hope for me was postponement. I had never let my soul free, and had quickly organized myself as a person because it is too risky to lose the form. But I now see what was really happening to me: I had so little faith that I had invented merely the future, I believed so little in whatever exists that I was delaying the present for a promise and for a future.
But now I discover that one doesn’t even need hope.
It’s much more serious. Ah, I know I am once again meddling with danger and should shut up to myself. One shouldn’t say that hope is not necessary, because that could transform itself, since I am weak, into a destructive weapon. And for yourself, into a useful weapon of destruction.
I could not understand and you could not understand that dispensing with hope — really means action, and today. No, it is not destructive, wait, let me understand us. It is a forbidden subject not because it is bad but because we risk ourselves.
I know that if I abandoned what was a life entirely organized around hope, I know that abandoning all that — in favor of that wider thing which
is being alive — abandoning all that hurts like separating from a child not yet born. Hope is a child not yet born, only promised, and that bruises.
But I know that at the same time I want and no longer want to contain myself. It’s like death throes: some thing in death wants to break free and yet fears letting go of the safety of the body. I know it is dangerous to speak of the lack of hope, but listen — a deep alchemy is happening in me, and it was in the fire of hell that it was forged. And that gives me the greatest right: to err.
Listen without fright and without suffering: the neutral of the God is so great and vital that I, unable to stand the cell of the God, I had humanized it. I know it is horribly dangerous to discover now that the God has the power of the impersonal — because I know, oh, I know! that it’s as if that meant the destruction of the plea!
And it is as if the future stopped coming to exist. And we cannot, we are needy.
But listen for a moment: I am not speaking of the future, I am speaking of a permanent present. And that means that hope does not exist because it is no longer a postponed future, it is today. Because the God does not promise. He is much greater than that: He is, and never stops being. We are the ones who cannot stand this always present light, and so we promise it for later, just in order not to feel it today, right this very minute. The present is the face today of the God.The horror is that we know that we see God in life itself. It is with our eyes fully open that we see God. And if I postpone the face of reality until after my death — it’s out of guile, because I prefer to be dead when it is time to see Him and that way I think I shall not really see Him, just as I only have the courage to really dream when I sleep.