Everything was so calm that if it hadn’t been for the soft, continuous pressure exerted on me,
an extremely light and extremely firm pressure that I wasn’t sure I wasn’t exerting on it by my resistance and by the direction of my waiting,
I could have believed I had already reached some goal an ultimate one, perhaps, one of the ultimate goals.
And yet, the calm also seemed to interpose itself between us, not as an obstacle, true, nor as a distance, but as a memory.
A dangerous calm, I realized once again, and one that was in some sense a danger even to itself,
threatened, threatening, yet unshakable, indestructible—it was final,
a word which here appeared opaque, but light.
It was dark, it was cold.
The waiting (the calm)
made me feel that over there, on one of the slopes which I could only situate over there,
was an opening onto a different region, one that was even more useless and more hostile
and that we both dreaded in the same way.
The space was evasive, wily, frightened.
Maybe it had no center, which was why it disoriented me by its evasion, its wiliness, its temptation.
It stole away; it kept stealing away, and yet not always.
Abruptly,
I had before me a hungry evidence, an ultimate avidity which I had to escape,
as though it were drawn, in me, by the sense of that center which it didn’t have or by that calm that awaited me.
A terrible feeling that immediately made me draw back.
But I, too, became wily, I learned not to be content with it, not to return to myself.
I never despaired, I tirelessly prowled around.
I had lost every habit, every path.
The only firm thing I had was the motionless thought that enveloped us and perhaps protected US.
And yet, I had glimpsed some possibilities, recognized the places where everything became denser, more real.
It was like a slope one had only to follow, a slope that started off from calm and ended in calm.
On either side were shining images, an endless din.
That din made me drunk, perhaps crazy.
It seemed to me motionless, high, and smooth, it was a height that pushed me back down toward the bottom,
a speech untouched by the silence.
It was at once powerful and empty, authoritarian and docile.
It was uttered far away from here, far away even from the space, and as though outside,
over there in the useless region, and yet also in me.
A feeling that at no price should I make use of the agitation of that speech,
nor adhere to it.
But I stayed on the crest of that narrow drunkenness, cramped against a phantom of lightness,
controlling a feeling of pain, of joy, not controlling it.
It was light, joyous, of an amazing lightness,
it allowed itself to be seen rather than heard,
a shining sphere, a sphere that merged with its surface, kept growing, and was calm as it grew.
The agitation of a speech in no way confused
and when it falls silent, it does not fall silent:
I could distinguish myself from it, only hear it while hearing myself in it,
this immense speech which always said “We.”
The sort of drunkenness that sprang from it came from that “We” which sprang from me
and which, far beyond the room where the space began to enclose itself,
obliged me to hear myself in that chorus whose base I situated over there,
somewhere in the direction of the sea.
That was where we all were, over there, erect in the solitude of our unity,
and what we said ceaselessly praised what we were:
“What else is there now but us?”
“No one.”
“Who are the distant ones and who are the close ones?”
“We here and we over there.”
And who are the oldest and who the youngest?” “We are.”
“And who must be glorified, who comes to us, who waits for us?” “We must and we do.”
“And the sun—where does it get its light from?”
“From us and only us.”
“And the sky what exactly is it?” “The solitude that is in us.”
“Then who must be loved?”
“I.”
A mysterious answer, a strange murmur that disturbs us:
the voice is weak, harsh like the squeak of a lizard.
Our own has the volume and strength of worlds added onto worlds, but it is also silent.
The other has something animal about it, too physical. Almost imperceptible, it shakes us.
Even though it may be a sort of ritual, hearing it is a disquieting, sublime surprise.
A feeling of immense happiness this is what I can’t get rid of,
what radiates eternally from these days, what began the first moment,
what makes that first moment still continue, always continue.
We remain together.
We live turned toward ourselves as though toward a mountain lifting vertiginously from universe to universe.
Never any stop to it, no limit, a drunkenness ever drunker and calmer.
“We”, the word glorifies itself eternally, rises endlessly, passes between us like a shadow,
lies under our eyelids like a gaze that has always seen everything.
It is the shelter we hurry under, knowing nothing,
our eyes closed, and our mouths are also closed.
How we nevertheless see things, that strange sun, that terrible sky, this is what doesn’t preoccupy us.
Insouciance is the gift we have been given, and from the first moment, it was already a very old thing
the feeling of that altitude, an immense column whose top and bottom, merging, put us within reach of an infinite growth.
Yes, it always goes farther. It is always more indestructible, always more immobile.
Eternity is achieved, but grows on.
Such a discovery is accepted right away.
No beginning and yet the soar of a perpetual awakening.
No end, but an aspiration always satisfied and always desiring.
This thought scarcely weighs upon our shoulders, there is nothing solemn or grave about it,
it is lightness itself
it makes us laugh, that is our way of examining it.
Frivolity is what is best about us.
It unsettles us to praise ourselves for being frivolous: as though an unknown center were being touched in us.
Sometimes, the sky changes color. Already black, it becomes blacker.
It increases by one tone, as though to show that the impenetrable has withdrawn still further.
I could be afraid I am the only one to realize this.
Everything, it claims, is common to us, except the sky
our share of solitude passes through this point.
But it also says this share is the same for everyone
and we are all united within this point even in our separation, united only here and not elsewhere
this would be the ultimate goal.
What proves it is that every time the black becomes blacker, by a nuance that can only be communicated within our very midst,
what each of us then secretly says, in order to give reality to that sign,
rises from all sides into one common cry that alone reveals to us what we have caused ourselves alone to hear.
A terrible cry, apparently always the same.
What is terrible about it at its highest point does not change,
and yet we know that it varies imperceptibly in response to the intangible variation of the sky.
That is why it is terrible.
We wouldn’t tolerate the sky being a single point.
This is probably the source of the thought that has lain down on me,
that wraps me around and protects me like a veil:
“But if it weren’t a point, if it weren’t as infinitesimal as the sharpest needle point,
how could I bear it?
Do you mean the sky sinks into us like the point of a needle?”
“That’s it, yes, that’s right.”
This point would therefore be what pierces the most distant of memories.
The greatest calm reigns.
It’s a unique moment.
Certainly, here we are attaining something that was not hoped for, that comes unexpectedly,
that happens the very moment we expected the opposite
one gets up if one was lying down,
one freezes,
if one was running perhaps one was running away,
or, to put it better, one stops and bows one’s head as though to reflect.
True, I don’t remember this.
Speech informs us about it,
image shows it to us, memory does not encounter it
we move about uselessly behind ourselves.
And yet, I remember many things, everything, maybe, but not that moment,
and as soon as I move toward it more boldly,
I run up against that extremely fine and amazingly distant point
that black point we call the sky, that single changing point, ever blacker and sharper,
which we find suddenly before us
and which is there only to urge us to withdraw,
go back inside the calm
from which our lightness has also eternally made us go forth.
What, then, would remove us from the calm?
Why is this equilibrium, once attained, lost again, as though forever?
What is the source of the feeling we have that we must look after everyone around that moment of calm,
that cold moment whose memory is nevertheless strange to us?
Why do we know that thing of which there is no knowledge?
Imperceptibly the question raises us up, throws us upon one another, is our balance, the balance of a happy day.
The happiness of always saying Yes, of endlessly affirming.
We have known other days.
Back there, in the past, it seems we walked more quickly, close together we glided more furtively.
Toward what place? Why such haste?
Sometimes, we look at one another as though between us there were a memory,
not a memory, forgetfulness, the touch of an instant, the hope that draws a circle and isolates us.
Is it the past this suddenly visible face?
We knew those days, they don’t belong to yesterday, they are eternally those that are coming,
those that do not pass, and they are the joy of the brightness that comes from us,
and they are the surprise of having breached the wall,
and, without error or doubt, going by every road joyously toward ourselves.
Why should all that have changed?
Why should what had been said, the eternal, cease to be said?
“But nothing has changed. It’s only that you also have to know eternity in the past.
You have to raise yourself high enough to be able to say: that was.
Such is the mission now reserved for you.”
I don’t believe in that speech, but I don’t have the power to avoid it either.
It is as though I had to hear it in the past too,
and I feel that not to believe it is to fall more quickly than it is falling down the slope it has already dug.
Spirit of lightness, it must not be betrayed.
[ Metro Line 4 - Last / Man] It is when one moves away from it that the feeling of a constant thought turns into the feeling of an unmoving surveillance.
It still protects, but it also bears down ”lightly”
it couldn’t bear down more than the gravity toward which we let ourselves fall.
And where would we fall, if we fell a little more?
If we were capable of becoming terribly, guiltily heavy?
Isn’t that question already the weight that could precipitate us, make us tumble, into an answer?
The answer is that perhaps we would fall back into the calm
from which one doesn’t emerge except through lightness,
because in it everything becomes infinitely light, too light to remain there.
[ Metro Line 4 - Last / Man ]