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.
I know that what I am feeling is serious and could destroy me. Because — because it is like giving myself the news that the kingdom of heaven already is.
And I don’t want the kingdom of heaven, I don’t want it, all I can stand is the promise of it! The news I am getting from myself sounds cataclysmic to me, and once again nearly demonic. But it is only out of fear. It is fear. Since relinquishing hope means that I shall have to start living, and not just promise myself life. And this is the greatest fright I can have. I used to hope. But the God is today: his kingdom already began.
And his kingdom, my love, is also of this world. I did not have the courage to stop being a promise, and I was promising myself, like an adult who lacks the courage to see she is already an adult and keeps promising herself maturity.
And so I was realizing that the divine promise of life is already being honored, and that it always was. Before, only once in a while, I was reminded, in an instantaneous and immediately shunned vision, that the promise is not only for the future, it is yesterday and it is permanently today: but that was shocking to me. I preferred to keep asking, without the courage to already have.
And I do. I always will. All I have to do is need, and I have. Needing never ends since needing is inherent to my neutral. Whatever I do with the plea and the want — that will be the life I will have made from my life. Not putting oneself in view of hope is not the destruction of the plea! and is not abstaining from neediness. Ah, it’s by increasing it, it’s by infinitely increasing the plea that is born of neediness.
Infinitely increasing the plea that is born of neediness.
It is not for us that the cow’s milk flows, but we drink it. The flower was not made for us to look at it or for us to smell its fragrance, and we look at it and smell it. The Milky Way does not exist for us to know of its existence, but we know of it. And we know God. And what we need from Him, we elicit. (I don’t know what I am calling God, but thus he may be called.) If we only know very little of God, that is because we need little: we only have of Him whatever is inevitably enough for us, we only have of God whatever fits inside us. (Nostalgia is not for the God we are missing, it is the nostalgia for ourselves who are not enough; we miss our impossible grandeur — my unreachable present is my paradise lost.)
We suffer from being so little hungry, though our small hunger is enough for us to deeply miss the pleasure we would have if our hunger were greater. We only drink as much milk as the body needs, and of the flower we only see as far as our eyes and their flat fullness go. The more we need, the more God exists. The more we can take, the more God we shall have.
He lets us. (He was not born for us, neither were we born for Him, we and He are at the same time). He is uninterruptedly busy with being, as all things are being but He does not keep us from joining Him, and, with Him, be busy being, in such a fluid and steady interchange — like that of living. He, for example, He uses us totally because there is nothing in each of us that He, whose necessity is absolutely infinite, does not need. He uses us, and does not prevent us from using Him. The ore that is in the earth is not responsible for not being used.