English translation of the original French using Google Tramslate
Google Translate, an online tool, has been used to produce this translation in English of the original French, La Clef des Contes
In French, the word 'bigorneau' has multiple meanings: it is the name of the littorina (a genus of mollusk), and in colloquial speech, this word is used as a synonym for the words "blockhead", "idiot", that is, it is used to refer to a person who looks strange or stupid in the eyes of others.
'The Key to the Fairy Tales'
Bigorneau Oh Little One 1. The Old Man of Years 2. The Mother of Springs 3. A Second 4. John the Idiot 5. Bigorneau The Song of Lost Ages 6. The Black Wagon 7. Bigorneau among the Crustaceans 8. The Path of Not-yet The Song at the End of the World 9. The Enigma 10. The Womb of the Earth 11. An Unknown Life 12. And Sinks the Galley 13. The Miracle of the Earth 14. An Impossible Body 15. The Great Imposture The Song at the End of the World 16. A Light Man 17. Light Time 18. The Music of Matter 19. And They Were Stripped Naked
All's miracle here and can by miracle change.
Sri Aurobindo Savitri
ALWAYS, there is an old memory that stirs within us. Something that sings from the other side, or that calls, or that haunts. On the other side of what, we don't really know—the "savages" of yesteryear (not those of today) perhaps knew better. Always, there is an old Unknown that lives within us and pulls at us, and that seems so old, and so close, like a stranger who would still be known, who would be ourselves and more than us, like a lost child who no longer finds his way, like a very old song that no longer finds its notes, like a very old tenderness that embraced us... over there, on the other side of the years that we live here groping, so badly, in our skin of today. And "it" pulls, and it pulls, towards what, we don't know, or we no longer know, and yet it is as if we had always known. It is "a country over there" where we had run, played, always played, a large sunny space that still inhabits us between our four walls and our tight suits, "it" beats inside in this child's heart that no longer knows very well where it is or where it is - from here or from there, and perhaps it is on both sides at the same time in the same skin. And it is such a great unease to no longer know, while knowing all the same... "something" that vibrates inside, that calls inside, so far, so close, like a lost love, like a thirst that had known its source and which runs, and which runs in the desert of our boulevards and through the gray streets of every day. Will know-
Do we ever think about where we come from and where "it" comes from? But it's there, we can't do anything about it, and it pulls, and it pulls - it's "on the other side".
And sometimes, this other side comes to smile at us in a dream, to sing its note in a lost moment, to open its eyes when we are not looking at anything, the clouds passing, the water flowing, the wave rolling, and this "nothing" is suddenly inhabited by a whole infinity... of a second, which leaves us dazzled, and then it passes, and we run again to catch up with this second of nothing. Or we forget, we cover ourselves with cloaks of forgetfulness or noise because "it" hurts too much, this small, null second so full of... "something" that is no longer and is still. But it comes to find us again, and again, at an unexpected turning point, like a small question without words, like music without notes, or like a cry of something that would like to be or be born and that makes a mute wound. There is something that is not there and is still, and that makes a hole in our lives.
This "hole" of the unknown in our lives, a few beings have populated it with divine music—Beethoven, Bach...—, with a magic poem—Rimbaud, Villon, and others—, with a sacred vibration like the gong of the temples and the Vedic incantations that go so far through time and space. But we are still within our walls of here-now. Or Tales still that evoke mythical characters and landscapes and yet so familiar to us as if we finally found ourselves there, as if it were "the country" at last, the "something" that we wanted to be and live.
And then, there were all the makers of Paradise who wanted to lock up this little divine second, this little undertow of infinity, in one box or another, in one god or another, some "savior" of our never-saved Misery and our holed hearts. But Paradise is on the other side, and Heaven and the Good Lord are on the other side, and yet this "other side" persists in beating within us at the end of all these unknown millennia, of all these vanished faces and all these wasted pains. There is an old Music that persists, an old Thirst that persists, an old Wild Bird that has never been caught and that still beats its wings in our cage.
And then there's always that old Death who comes and slams his door on our songs and our tales and our hopes, and our unfulfilled loves. And it's the old Tragedy of always.
Is it forever?
There is a complete misdirection in our human lives. As if everything were seen upside down or through a screen.
And then, one day, the screen falls. Unfortunately, it falls when it's too late to do anything about it or change anything—on a deathbed or in a condemned cell. Then we realize that "death" is nothing, but that it's the screen that makes death. And that we've lived our whole life in death, a death that pretended to live and was enchanted by a few tales. But who wants to live the Tale and make the screen jump... without dying?
So do we need catastrophes to make us realize what is there? Or perhaps catastrophes are made, collectively and individually, to force us to see what is there? But... there is always this "but" of misfortune: it is always too late to change anything in this unfortunate situation, individual or collective, and live life on the right side - since, precisely, it is the moment when we go "to the other side." We must cross Death while living! and bring back here what is on the other side, change-transform this here with or by the power of what is supposedly on the other side. Live this Tale at last, this Music, this Vastness delivered, this Life which is no longer of death standing or waiting.
We no longer have time to wait: Death is all there, reigning over the world and grimacing, sneering through millions of little gnomes with dwarven brains equipped with disproportionate and hypnotic instruments. The entire species must cross the Wall, or die within.
But this "catastrophe" is wanted, or planned to force us to leave this very inhuman species and to change sides instead of dying eternally on the wrong side.
All evolution, all changes of species or passages from one species to another, have occurred through a kind of death that was Life after all and in spite of everything, an old screen falling to give way to another air and other ways of living—and to other eyes. Each time, it was a Fairy Tale come true... for a while. Until the new species shuts itself up in some new system or some new prison... which must break again to pass to wider eyes and a freer air. As if "something" were perpetually trying to free itself in our evolution.
And so on?
But where is the “next” when total, global Death is at our doorstep and destroying the very earth that supports us?
Is there another Law, finally, which is no longer that of Darwin and the evolution of skeletons? Are we going to make, in spite of ourselves, some improved skeleton... which will lead to some other mortal gnome equipped with gigantic means to improve old Death forever?
Or... are we going to touch the very Goal of this unfortunate evolution of Death and make—make—a divine species equipped with its divine means: the "other side" forever here in a body and in a singularly changed-transformed consciousness? And yet, this other side has always been here, in a body, but buried, engulfed under a thick filth, but which sometimes let out an immortal cry, a divine music, a golden dream, an enchanted tale which was like the premonition, or the memory, of what was to come—the man to be made.
We are completely unfinished. The world doesn't end with our story of madmen who became completely dangerous.
So, what is there in this mortal and unhappy body that could bridge the gap between what we are and what is to come? There must be a Miracle in there, in this body, since this devil of an Evolution has gone from miracle to miracle, from an impossibility each time changed into a new possibility. There must be a Secret in this Matter, a Power in this heavy matter, our matter.
Every time, in this terrible evolutionary zoology, there has to be a "first" who took the step through the death of his old species, or because of this very death. The obstacle is always the means.
Among us there are beings who have more open eyes or a more intense Fire of aspiration than the one we waste on mediocre ends or brief triumphs that always fail. This Fire is always the means, since it derives from the same Sun everywhere.
There was a revolutionary named Sri Aurobindo at the beginning of the century who aspired to free India from British rule. He was thrown into prison in Calcutta, put in a cell with iron bars, and was about to be hanged.
He waited for his hanging for a year.
When he left there on May 6, 1909, he no longer wanted to make a revolution in India or change the Law of the English, but to make a revolution of the species and change the Law of Death: "It is not a revolt against the British Government which any one can easily do. It is, in fact, a revolt against the whole universal Nature.. "
What happened?
And this hammer blow: “Man is a transitional being.”
He took refuge in Pondicherry where Mother joined him after the First World War:
"Salvation is physical ," she said. What happened?
What is this new fairy tale?
Are we going to live this tale of millennia?
By a strange coincidence of dates and journeys, there was a little sea creature who had escaped from a Nazi concentration camp on May 5. He was therefore very interested (or perhaps desperate) to know what had happened. This "transitional being," what? In death, one has time to dig its walls before it swallows you whole and once more into its hole. But once more is too many more times. It is defeat —perpetual defeat? And besides, there have been too many men of iron for two millennia.
This little one from the sea was a question of Fire on a burning hole that was him — him, what?
And one day, Mother told him: you have the possibility to do this work, because your cells have had the preliminary experience of death.
Then he opened his eyes wide, a little stunned, without understanding. He understood the strong wind and the open sea and the gentle surf that pearls on the beach. But cells? And on top of that, cells that have had the preliminary experience of death? What does that mean? Cells sailed under a sailor's skin.
It takes time to understand, and what's more, these cells weren't dead yet—luckily. But, little by little, he understood that these cells weren't sailing under a sailor's skin, but under everyone's skin, and a
"everyone" terribly teeming and ordinary and hideous, as if all of zoology were there, complete, Nazis included.
So his eyes opened a little wider and he really wanted to know what was going on in there, without any heavenly dreams or fairy tales.
Where is the "other side" in this walled-up thing that sails a little offshore for a while, and then... we scuttle ourselves, like everyone else. The open sea is good, if we can have it all the time and everywhere; the sky and dreams are good, if we can have them in our skin and sail with them. And death is disgusting.
So what happened in Alipore Jail where Sri Aurobindo waited for a year (and four days, to be exact) to be hanged?
This other side, which he experienced, what is it in physical, logical, and meteorological terms? Because the weather is there, or else it is still maritime and post-mortem dreams . Or posthumous, to speak in good French. He wanted to smell without post and touch and live.
So, this air, perfectly meteorological, that we can experience in our skin, what does it look like?
And the little man opened his eyes again without understanding: this air is more fluid than a gas and harder than diamond , said Sri Aurobindo. A new state of Matter... unknown?
It takes time to understand. Because, obviously, if it's corporeal, only the body can understand - the brain cells are rather blocked. Unless they block everything. And Sri Aurobindo called this "other side of here": the supramental world. It is no longer, obviously, the mental, intellectual world, which twists everything and turns anything in a thousand ways, none of which is the right one. We can think what we want, but the body is not deceived because it breathes or does not breathe, because it is at large or strangled between four walls, of any cell, which is not cellular (!)
So, the little one from the sea understood without understanding! He understood in his heart and in his old human pain, without understanding yet, except that one could escape from it. But he was adventurous and he wanted to escape from it. It burned too much in his heart, and it was heavy as lead, this old human pain.
And one day again, about this supramental world, or rather this supramental vibration , because the air and all meteorological space vibrate, like the forests, the sea, pain, or even the stone in its atomic whirlwind, Mother said to this little one of the sea: it is a power to crush an elephant .
So the little one opened his eyes again with his old logic: how can it be crushing if it is "fluid"? And what is crushed or to be crushed?
It still takes time to understand... But this little one from the sea absolutely wanted to understand. Mother and Sri Aurobindo had LIVED this, so it was livable or to be lived.
And little by little, but little by little, it is a very long time in the body's time that must experience. Little by little the little one, the burning aspirant to the true fairy tale, understood this simple thing: but it crushes death!
It crushes this screen, this wall between this side and the other. Perhaps it is precisely this wall between our human species and the other, the next one, the one that is to be made, like the wall that separates the fish of the abyss from the first fish on the beach that must breathe this "impossible" air... and learn to walk anyway.
And again little by little in the long time of the body, because the time of the body is so long compared to the little flashes of the Mind, which do not last - but once the body has understood, it is unshakably understood, like the first drop of milk from its mother's breast. This child of a new world being born has noticed a very extraordinary thing, but that no one sees because everyone is inside , and you have to be a little outside to see it: we, the men of this mental species, are TOTALLY enclosed in a lead spacesuit, like the astronaut who walks in space!
This is a great discovery!
For the great discovery is to notice what is there , the obstacle, invisible to all of us who are inside and who breathe this air of the good Lord! But it is a deadly and increasingly asphyxiating air - there is another air! You have to make a hole in the diving suit to notice it! It is the next air! like the one after the fish.
And then, this child of a new impossible world understood in his body why She had said: you have the possibility of doing this work, because your cells have had the preliminary experience of death ... But yes! This is exactly what happens: when these poor cells have to learn this other impossible air, on the other side of the lead spacesuit, they have exactly the sensation of bursting and being crushed, as the astronaut would be without his spacesuit.
It's a difficult dis-covery, it must be said. But it happens little by little, slowly, painfully. And it's because these cells had gone through the old death from which one does not emerge, the old hypnotic death in a lead bag, that they felt , could feel that... But no! It's full of sun on the other side, it's full of Love, it's full of Tenderness, it's full of free and vibrant and singing space, it's full of all the fullnesses possible and never imagined, not even in fairy tales.
It's a wonder... difficult. And a little overwhelming.
But above all this: a Divine, sacred sense, like a new kind of sense, in addition to (or outside of) our five senses.
And a cosmic sense.
For it is immediately evident, bodily evident, that this New, divine Evolution is not made for a little man, nor to produce a man.
"spectacular" as our legends would imagine, a sort of super-man endowed with amazing powers. Although our legends have a grain of truth and that too can come, because we quickly realize that the "laws of Nature" are not what we think (we do say "what we think "). It is a much deeper Revolution that is in sight.
Right away, from the start, or the first breakthrough, we are thrown into the other end of things, the old departure of our Misfortune. It is this Misfortune itself that forces us to look for the exit, as if the obstacle is always the Means. We always left by the wrong door, but there is the right door.
“ Salvation is physical ,” Mother said.
The first hole in the Diving Suit, if it throws us into a marvelous Divine sense, simultaneously throws us into a prodigious Cosmic sense, as if all the millennia were there at once—millennia of Misfortune. It is like a Hell that struggles fiercely against this sudden intrusion of a Power... disturbing, or expelling. All the devils were there, quite calm, lurking in the Night of matter, doing their little perpetual misfortune from life to life, from age to age, and finally opening their ugly jaws of death on all our little joys and our pretty tales. And all of a sudden, it is Life that enters the diving suit, true Life
—but they are furious, they are ferocious. And so everything is against, but a cosmic "against." It is the universal forces that are completely disturbed. Precisely these famous "laws" that have regulated our particular spacesuit and the entire terrestrial Spacesuit as we live it, or as we lived it. Because, ultimately, there is only ONE — there is no more you-and-me, in there, no more special little man, there is a terrestrial Whole coagulated like concrete and which says No to this divine invasion. It is Life and Death all of a sudden, entwined in the same body, the old thousand-year-old Combat which finally finds itself face to face, in broad daylight. And who will prevail?
We are right in the middle of the question. The whole world is in the question. And it is struggling like the millennia from which we emerged. Like the ancient first Rock of the ages.
So, immediately, the body understands why Sri Aurobindo said what seemed to us an enigma and a paradox: this new air is more fluid than a gas and harder than diamond . It is necessary to make a hole in this first terrestrial, cosmic Rock, as with a drill equipped with its diamond point. A Power to crush an elephant , said Mother - but yes! "It" could crush anything, but it crushes the Death of the world. And it is marvelously fluid, divinely fluid, like air never breathed, and fortunately so, because this "air" does not want to crush the man: it wants to crush the death of the man and the Lie of the world. And the cells know it! They know the marvelous Sun which is on the other side, the marvelous Love which is on the other side, and the Tenderness, the Freedom never known - more than
"laws," but the Law. Finally, the free man. Finally, Life . Something that is no longer the "opposite of," as love is the opposite of hate, life the opposite of death, virtue the opposite of sin—but in all these old opposites, the two embrace each other perfectly, and virtue secretly cherishes its sins and love suddenly turns to hostility and death smiles kindly from behind its painted mask
— and the gods have the art of changing into the devil. There is only ONE left, who was always full of Love and Joy and the great Open. But this time, in a body . The cells know. They have been waiting for this Moment — for how many centuries and millennia under our poor, unfortunate, deluded carcasses?
And all Evolution, the old evolution then appears in its true face in the limpid ray of the body's eyes: each time, at each stage, it was like a Miracle, like an impossibility made possible, as if "something" was perpetually trying to free itself in order to disembark in a larger system, in a more airy gaze, in a more conscious consciousness. And then the provisional "system" locked itself in a legal, normal, habitual prison, until it suffocated enough to break its old shell, or its old diving suit... and begin again.
But this time, we may be arriving at the true Exit, at what all these millennia and these old pains have sought and attempted, precisely because the entire Earth System has become asphyxiating. The Cruelty of the system had to jump out at us so that "we," men, or some of them, would seek to escape from it. The aberration we are experiencing has reached its breaking point.
And down there, in this old Matter that we think we know so well, there was a Smile waiting.
So we see, we can see, or at least the body can see and undergo this tremendous diamond fluidity that pound and pound and drill a hole through this Diving Suit of lead and concrete, and throws out into the daylight, in its limpid and powerful air, all the infamies of our old evolutionary zoology. It is the whole earth that is pounded and that jumps. We are living this Miracle in reverse.
This is the next Matter that is making its way.
But there is a "place" to this reverse, and when we begin to poke our noses through the other side of this diving suit, we realize, or we feel with stupefaction and wonder, that not only are the laws of Nature not as we think them in our diving suit, but that this very Matter, so petrified, so recalcitrant and uncrossable, except by our demonic and mortal means, is something else entirely - the very place of the Secret and the Mystery and the Miracle that made all these worlds. We realize, or the body perceives (painfully because it resists like all the rest of the cosmic body), that this "Matter"... my God! it is modeling clay.
Only, you need to have the right instrument to shape it.
Each species has modeled it in its own particular way and lived its particular modeling quite harmoniously, but our thinking, scientific and religious species has made of it indubitable and hypnotic and infallible concrete, from which there was only one exit, into the heavens of death or into the latest discoveries of our Science, which discovered only what it had, and thought and modeled mortally in its own diving suit. And we have modeled the evils that we thought.
But underneath, there was a Smile waiting, there was a Tenderness, a Love waiting... for his children to realize what they are.
This is the true Fairy Tale we would like to tell you. The one our poems, our dreams, and our songs have stammered through the ages. For there is a very old memory within us that remembers an elsewhere that was always hers, a Beauty, a Love, a great Open Space that were always hers, on the other hand that she always sheltered in her body, and which, this time, will be able to come here and shape her new body.
May 6, 1997 to Robert Laffont with gratitude
[In French, the word 'bigorneau' has multiple meanings: it is the name of the littorina (a genus of mollusk), and in colloquial speech, this word is used as a synonym for the words "blockhead", "idiot", that is, it is used to refer to a person who looks strange or stupid in the eyes of others.]
Oh little one...
You who search, you who run, who believe in the Devil or in God - and they would say they are all the same -, who believe in Love and it is happy and it is unhappy, do we know who loves, do we know who hates - and they would say they are all the same -, and we bump into each other and we shout, we laugh, we cry - and it is so similar, and we would like so much, oh! so much something that would not be the same, something that is so lacking, like a hole in the middle of our lives, like a thirst never satisfied, like a cry always the same that dresses itself in red, black, white and all the colors of a rainbow never grasped, and we would like so much, we would want so much something that we do not know, that would always be there, that would not be lacking, and we run and we run... after what is there , what is you - and who are you? You are wise, you are learned, and you know nothing; you are in love and you are no longer, and you no longer know; you are a vagabond and a rebel, but everything is revolting and you do not know why; you are a believer and an unbeliever, and you do not know what you believe or who to believe, and yet something believes and still believes deep inside you and would like to believe in the Devil or in God, but in something finally that would always be there, that would always love, that would be the Lighthouse finally, the rainbow forever in this Night where we run and which seems so similar to that of all the old Ancestors who haunt us and tell us of their death again and so many similar deaths, and so many disappointed loves and so much deceived Faith. So we run, we run, is it forever? We flee here, we flee there, in so many escapes always rigged, in so many traps as if everything were trapped, and in Hope all the same, as if Hope were the only beat of Life, and will we always be deceived? Oh! what is there , which would always be, like a Love finally fulfilled, like a cry become song, become sky and rainbow, this hole of thirst finally filled, become vast like all the seas, become ONE with all that is, without walls, without you or me, without devil and god, without no and yes and still no. Oh! what is there and which would be Yes to everything, without walls, without anything else still, in the only Thing which is and which is everything, which embraces everything, which sings everywhere.
O little one of my heart, it is you that I would like to say, who am I, it is your Secret, which is my Secret and our Secret to all who labor and laugh and cry after what is there and which would fill all these deaths that haunt us, all these vain pyres, all these centuries that cry within us and hope again and again and always.
There is a Miracle undiscovered by all our Sciences which know nothing, by all our Temples which are always crumbling, by all our Faiths which always start from scratch, but which start again all the same - because the Miracle is there deep inside a man, who dresses in black, in blue, in red, but beneath the garment, what is there?
There is a Matter, the beginning and the end of everything, the beginning that never began and that always hopes, the Man who is not yet and who always waits for his Secret which is there, his Miracle which is there, in his Matter as in the stars and all the oceans and all the rainbows.
This Matter, your Matter, what is it? This Miracle, what is it? This Secret that would fill all Ages and all sorrows...
There is a Miracle in Matter, we must get there .
So, if you will, listen to this tale of no language and of all the unhappy centuries that would like to get there.
Once upon a time there was an old, old man. No one knew his age, no one knew his name. He lived on a high mountain, where great rivers have their source, that is why some called him the man of the springs, others called him the nameless one, and a few mischievous ones called him the no-no, for he never said no. He looked at the snows, well, for how many snows, and it was so absorbing that, sometimes, he would go off into other snows, from no country here. There was this great glacier, like a pyramid, which was called the ice-pyramid by those who were learned, and this morning light on the icy slopes was so sparkling and a little pink that he would go off, sometimes, into a great light from no sun here. He knew so much, this nameless, ageless man, that he sometimes dreamed of making his love flow like the little river that gushed out there and went toward the plains in a great river among so many men who had so many names and a birth somewhere between four walls. His gaze went far, far away there among these men, these plains, so far that he sometimes went to other plains, of now or later, or was it before men? And his love flowed and was lost, like the great river, washing away bodies, sorrows, carrying ashes and garlands and lost laughter, black and pink alluvium toward the old Sea that guards everything. And he too, this old man without name or name kept all his buried treasure, of so many sorrows and laughter vanished and of men or girls of so many names and suns or nights from before or now or later, sunken or to come from a belly so deep that he plunged, sometimes, into this belly of no man, so far away, so old, and sometimes went to the other side of all the depths, of all the sorrows, of all the cries and laughter, in a Sea from elsewhere, from no country here and which was nevertheless like the little spring here, so fresh, so young, pearled with laughter, where he dipped his feet and drank stars of snow - was it now, was it always? And the old man without a name looked, looked far away over there, into that over there that pearled here, his eyes wide open, turned blue like the sea fringed with foam or ice, then closed in on itself as if forever, into a nameless abyss that was itself, into a time without time that was itself, into a dazzling treasure of no lost galleon, and he didn't know if he was smiling or crying, he knew nothing more of here or there, and it was full like all the seas, like all the hearts that beat, and it was nothing like the cry of the wagtail that passes, for a second, after drinking a little pearl from the waterfall.
But there was a kind of sorrow, however, in this old heart that had gone through all sorrows like springs and winters and tides under so many moons, that had gone through so many laughs and joys lost then found and lost again under so many faces loved and vanished, and found again like the little spring with a new drop all fresh, already gone, like the wagtail all singing and flown away - towards what Destiny again, always the same? And what weaves this song, what flows this drop in the great River, towards what Sea again, always the same? A drop of man, what is it? And there was something that stirred in this old heart, beyond the sorrows, beyond the lives and the faces, as if everything had already been lived and yet new, brand new, as if something still had not been lived, was still thirsting, still flowing a drop for... what? He could, this Old Man of so many hearts and so many faces, melt there into the old snows and make one more little snowflake, of nothing, in a great dazzling light always the same, for what other child's or old man's gaze like him, and the waterfall begins its little pearls again, and the bird its cry, and the men, over there, between four walls begin their loves and their sorrows and their little hours so quickly ended, and their story always the same? He looked, this Old Man of the years, and he was full of eternity in every second and every drop and every cry, he was full of an infinite treasure, and his heart stirred at not being able to fill this bottomless hollow of love, at not being able to give-give this overflow, this "something", to flow one more drop - and perhaps as long as there was pain in the world, a little body of thirst, a dead child out there, without his wagtail, a man in his four walls without his little waterfall, must this Old Man flow and flow one more drop? And it was as if he were waiting for a miraculous drop that would change everything. What good is one more flake in the old snow of the years? What good is this Treasure that no one hears?
And everything was full and there was always this hollowness.
To whom shall I tell my secret among all these hearts that do not know their own beat?
To whom shall I tell the Secret of this ever-new drop, of this Treasure of a little man?
Which little one shall I ask his own question?
At that moment, the Great Lady of the Spring appeared. And the Old Man of the Snows was dazzled.
She was beautiful, oh! like no creature known, like a pure drop that contained all drops, like an iridescent light that contained all the stars of snow, and her long golden hair like dawn on the great pyramid of ice, streaming with sunny joy, and tender and sweet as if everything would melt in that smile, and he too and forever, filled and disappeared in that great robe of love.
It was a second, and it was all times as if arrived at their Goal, all the pains, all the laughter as if swallowed up in their thirst, which was She.
Perhaps she was the Mother of Worlds.
But this Love, like on the other side of all the depths, of all the nights, of all the days that begin again to drink again this single pure drop...
Dazzled, the Old Man closed his eyes for a second, which contained all the seconds, past, future, unknown, and crying out to begin again this single Miracle, as if death had never been, never sorrows, never-never — it was always-always, the only drop of all worlds, the only beat of all lives.
And he looked again.
And everything was the same, and everything was changed.
— O Old One, do not grieve any longer...
And his gaze fell on the little waterfall and the stream still the same and the plains over there, all pink, and those men.
— My river will not always roll these ashes and these pains and these cries, and this mire of men towards my great Sea, nor these faded garlands and these laughs so soon extinguished, nor these beats that beat nothing. Listen, listen to the great Thirst that rises through the dead and the ruins and the children of an unhappy day and the cruel nights that tear to tear themselves apart and finally cry out their only Cry, tear out their only walled Love, their scorned, betrayed Joy, their dead who die again to find Life at last, their temples and their false gods that crumble to deliver what beats there, in their own hearts as in the undertow of the universes. Listen, listen to the great Thirst that rises and that will sweep away these mire and these living dead who have never lived a true second, never drunk a pure drop like your wagtail with a cry...
The Great Goddess was silent for a moment, which was like every second in one, like all time in a smile.
— I am waiting... I am waiting for a child of the earth, a pure cry that will cry out for all men. I need... I need a human cry that will cross this old undertow of sorrows and old laughter for nothing and old days that rise over nothing. My night hides a Secret, my Evil hides a secret, my Death and my false gods hide a sublime Birth - but it is necessary , it is necessary a true cry that will tear all these masks from me, and stand pure and straight on the Nothingness of the old world and of old sick men. I am waiting... I am waiting for this pure drop springing from the unhappy centuries.
She fell silent.
Then she added, serious this time like a quiet storm covering a black horizon.
— My Pain wants to get the answer from men... by any means.
And the snows covered his silence.
But silences linger for a long time beneath the night of the world, imperturbable because they know the Hour.
And men go without knowing that there is an Hour and a second where everything counts and is chosen.
The seconds pass like a screaming wagtail.
Now, there, in the countries of the Sea, a seagull had cried.
A little boy from the Sea, adventurous like all sailors, had decided to leave, to sail up the Great River—and he didn't even know it, or not yet. For, for a long time, things vibrate inside, perhaps for centuries, then they stammer outside without anyone knowing why or by what path, at the chance of a passing cry, of a blowing wind; do we know what happens under a second and what cry of the centuries it crosses, nor what unknown old man suddenly finds himself in a foreign heartbeat, in other climates, as if everything crossed and recrossed itself through the same sky and longitudes so similar to the same man here or there. Are there as many men as we think?
In truth, if we were to lift a small pebble, we might find the whole universe.
On this bay, too, the ages had passed. The sailing ships had changed shape, the caravels and schooners had passed, then the tuna boats, the lobster boats, the old pinnaces, but the sailors remained the same, and the pearly October light filled a few men with dreams.
— My name is Bigorneau, and I'm not fooled.
So went our little one, who was quite big, by Jove, on the quayside of Saint-Bréznec, accompanied by his dog Nic, an abbreviation for Copernicus, named after a great Breton who had discovered that the earth was not at the center of the universe, and who was condemned by our Holy Mother the Church. And, my God, what is not at the center of the universe? Even the little gull in a flap of its wings and the barnacle under its shell... He went, his oar on his shoulder and his nose in the wind.
— It's from the Northwest, Nic, and we're going broadside to Taillefer.
Nic nodded and smelled the sardine nets drying on the dock.
Besides, it was Grandpa Ludovic who built this quay, another great Breton (who hadn't invented the Eiffel Tower, although he was a qualified engineer), but who had set sail with some pretty Breton woman, leaving his quay and a tearful grandmother—such is life. But he died a long time ago, and so did his grandmother, with her tears.
— such is life. (God rest their souls.)
The soul of life, we don't know, or the soul of death, perhaps, but the wind is good and the tide is at mid-ebb, just enough to head for Taillefer, and Belle-Île, over there, so beautiful, the grandest lady of all the islands in the world.
And there, on the end of the quay, just what was needed, was Jean the Idiot, Bigorneau's best friend after his dog. Lady! Jean was the most adorable kind of idiot there was, after, or rather before, the countless non-idiots who don't know they are such and who run around without knowing where they are going—such is life. (God rest their souls, or the Devil... after all, you never know.)
Jean was there, standing there, his cap tilted back and his red lock of hair on his forehead, a real redhead's carrot, and his eyes, blue as the endless sea, looking at you... with amazement... as if he had never seen anything like it - Jean looked at everything with amazement as if for the first time in his life, and there was a kind of delight in his eyes, as if he were seeing the Madonna herself before him and he couldn't believe his eyes.
— Hey! Jean, hello brother! The wind is good, there's a breeze.
— Hhon, hhon...
That's all he could say, because he was mute too (probably from stupor since his birth on this planet). Yet he wasn't drunk, although he recognized Muscadet among all the wonders of this world; everyone invited him, all the local guys who had a good laugh.
— Hey! Jean, a little glass of muscadet?
— Hhon, hhon... Hhon.
What they were laughing about, we don't know, but Jean made them laugh as if for the first time in their lives. It's true that Jean discovered Muscadet every day (perhaps even several times a day) as if he had never known so much goodness under the heavens, although born of an unknown father. So, we didn't know if he was drunk, if he was an idiot, or where he came from or from what blessed womb of the earth, because who is lucky enough not to have known ancestors? (Alas, there are all the other unknowns.) Some said he was Marie's son, but we don't know, because Marie was making mistakes everywhere—such is life.
But Bigorneau, for his part, didn't think Jean was an idiot at all. He wasn't pretending, though; he was perfectly stupid, but so truly stupid that it was like the Wisdom of a first man in the world who opens his eyes wide upon this Marvel—and all the non-idiots see nothing but fire, or logarithms, or strange Good Lords in a special place, or bad Devils everywhere. Born of an unknown father in an unknown world... the lucky fellow! But sometimes he would give a little wink, with his right eye, and only to Bigorneau and to him alone, as if he had understood everything—and this "everything" was as astounding, or stupefied, as Jean's eyes and the world's first great tide. And he wasn't pretending to be amazed, he was REALLY amazed, as if the sky had suddenly fallen on his head, as if it were "the first time that"... He was passing in front of the Town Hall, he saw the Mayor all decorated (damn! the retired navy), and his tricolor sash, and it was "Hhon, hhon..." what is this invention? He saw the Rector go by, Tristan, all dressed in black and his barrette on his head (the Good Lord, that's not funny), with his choirboys muttering Latin, on their way with a box towards the cemetery - "Hhon hhon..." what is this thing? It didn't exist! or it existed for the first time as he passed, and he shook his red lock of hair incredulously.
And Bigorneau, his oar on his shoulder and his nose in the wind, sometimes wondered...
— Tell me, Jean, am I dreaming?
And there was that little wink in the right eye. And yet, there was a good breeze, it was a frank and true Northwest wind. It was perhaps the only true thing in all that. It curled like a little laugh from the open sea, it pearled like the Rosette after its bath—she was very beautiful, by the way. And then that smell of seaweed under the foam of the rock.
— Tell me, Jean...
And Bigorneau remained with his silent question—he didn't know what to ask! But there was something to ask. There was a question, perhaps like the first Idiot who had just arrived and wasn't yet a man, or who didn't know what he was doing in all this.
—Tell me, Jean... why? Why, what?
A seagull screeched on the end of the dock.
And Jean looked at Bigorneau as if he had never seen such a prodigy. But little Noroît was blowing and Copernicus began to bark at the universe.
He rounded the end of the quay with his canoe, which had been all white until then, until the day when, in a fit of rebellion (against what, we don't know), he painted it black tar from the bowsprit to the transom, including the rudder. But the mainsail remained blue, as did the small jib that flapped. The beacon remained in place, and the rocks in the channel foamed. Bigorneau too. When he was on land, there was always something angry inside him—my "typhoons," he said—and then he would burst into laughter as soon as he passed the beacon with his little red hat (red = danger). Damn! Bigorneau loved danger, he loved the storm, the wind, the unknown—the smell of honeysuckle too, along the paths of the Semaphore. But he had to go back to land in the evening, that was the problem, or to a port and that was the beginning of other problems... which were not maritime. Hardly had he set foot on land than he could be heard letting out a whole volley of carefully chosen curses, in good French, and even in Breton: gasht , maloru , he could be heard even at the nuns' house, "There's Bigorneau coming back," the fishermen would say.
Why was he so angry? With the Continent, with himself?
With life? Life, what, apart from the open sea and the breakers that always smiled, even when they slapped the bow and rolled on the deck; the storm was smiling, it was to be crossed—tra-ver-ser, that was Bigorneau's favorite password. On land, what did one cross? Nothing that moved, tempting smiles, too tempting, that ended in I don't know what bed, from which one emerged with a thirst for muscadet as if one were an enormous hole of thirst. Jean Bernest (that was the name of our Idiot) was then a wonderful brother. With him, one understood one another.
And then the silence offshore, in the dead calm, when the gentle swell gently lapped against the waves as if life were drifting infinitely into the blue. A quiet little second that floated like foam on the swell. And then that thirst again to go further, as if there were a marvelous "further"... that always deceived to draw you further still—was there a point to all that? And yet, Jean-Bigorneau didn't want any point at all! The "point" was always to start again. Then Bigorneau began to creak like a poorly greased pulley. And the meaningless, mute question began again.
He could well have drowned himself in muscadet, or rather in the open sea once and for all - why did he want to drown himself? His mother, Lisette (Marie-Louise on the birth certificates - "Marie-Louise-the-silent," said the great-grandfather of the tribe) was solidly Breton and ready for anything, even with half a dozen children given to her by her very Christian and not at all shameless father. In that respect, she was solid and frank, she was even a bit like Bigorneau's good port, but there were so many other sides... unknown - this damned genealogy, how far back did it go?
So he grumbled and set sail.
Every day he hoisted sail and his little jib which flapped, but every day, it was well known as a harbor bottom, and the open sea had no bottom, and rightly so! This Bigorneau, he would have liked to hit a bottom that had no bottom! He was completely unreasonable and unbearable. He would have liked to find a port that had no quay - he might as well look for a port in the middle of the Atlantic, or in the unknown Hesperides.
And he sometimes wondered if he wasn't going to drown for good? For no reason. For no reason.
He was desperate... about what? And at the same time, he was like a tremendous hope. About what?
Strange, the wreck buoys are green.
Life was a strange adventure in an idiocy that had to have meaning—it was like a death that perpetually wanted to live in order to run, and a life that perpetually needed to die, or to run forever.
You tell me if all this makes sense? Hmph, hmph...
But he no longer wanted to return to port, that was clear and decided, even if it hurt good Mother Lisette.
And he slipped the anchor one last time.
There is something missing that is so lacking in our lives
A window that would open an infinity that would smile a corner of the heart that would sink into Your great wave that would flow there as if forever
There is something missing that is so lacking in our lives A something that is forever that fills each hour like a music known like a sweetness lost and found in this moment
There is something that screams so loudly in our lives
Something that is not there and that pierces our lives with a nameless pain , a call so old that it is like all the pains in the world , a call so warm that it is like a bottomless love for all these lives, these lost lives
Ah! Will we find that something that is missing , that is so lacking in a small second as in lost ages?
O wanderer of the centuries, what are you seeking? Bigorneau, what an idea! Who called you thus?
I have no name, he said, no country, I am from the sea - for the rest, see the birth certificates.
Then, one day during his travels, his ports, his endless quays, always the same, Bigorneau landed in... the Insane... total.
On a quay, but a quay like no other quay, yet of this Time, in a country called Never-Beyond.
But Plus-Never, it runs, it runs — forever?
A concrete platform leading to tracks, cattle cars. Iron men, machine guns in hand, screaming, and piles of bewildered little Bigorneaus being shoved into said cars with rifle butts. Ten, one hundred, five hundred, who knows, in each car, until it was as full as a sardine can and the last of the pile was shoved in with a final blow of the rifle butt. And the door slides closed on the night.
A Night like before the Ages.
After that Night, there was no more day—never-never. We were dead forever. We had no more country—never-never. No more name, except a registration number, 53,766. No more brothers, except from Misery, no more known men, from the sea, the earth, or the heavens—we were on the other side, from everything, from life, death, and hell, in a hole in nowhere, which was perhaps the hole of the first Bigorneau in the world, clinging... to what? on a bare rock. Like the first Idiot in the world, mute and stunned, who knew neither himself an idiot nor in the world, nor... what? It was nothing more than a formidable WHAT about the night and nothingness—it was perhaps this "what" that made one cling to the rock.
We begin, we finish, it was the same. It was neither begun nor finished—it was... nothing.
Yet it lasts.
"It" lasted three nights and two "days" of this Time, standing, side by side, like in a sardine wagon. The first night, nothing: everything was stunned. Sometimes the train stopped in the night and you heard a volley of machine gun fire—a hole in the floor, an escapee?... But you never escape from that again! Escape, where? From death? But there wasn't even a tomb to escape from "somewhere"! The second night, still standing, but there were numbers dying while standing, there was no room to make a death, and the fetid smells while standing. Some started screaming, they were going crazy, until the number next to you smashed his face in, otherwise everyone would go crazy. The third night, there was nothing but silence and a few dead people standing—a silence...
On the third day, the slides opened, and they were thrown into the snow. And naked Horror.
Bigorneau-53.766 was still saying something to himself, as if from the bottom of an old ocean: we must cross.
He crossed 536 days and as many nights. But there were no more days or nights, it was the same, there was nothing clinging to the bare rock. On the 535th day, Bigorneau felt himself being pulled by something inside; he turned over on his straw mattress—his neighbor looked at him with big, tender eyes: "There were meadows..." Meadows? "You'll tell my mother..."
And that was it, he was dead. An iron man came, pulled off his striped jacket, branded his number in ink on his chest, and into the oven.
Bigorneau never knew his name, nor the name of his village, nor his mother's name—he was from nowhere.
Outside there were piles of corpses waiting.
On the five hundred and thirty-sixth day, Bigorneau was thrown "free" into a Night even greater because it was everyone's day, but he was forever from nowhere.
Still, there was this neighbor with big, tender eyes who left him something, like a message.
Perhaps this was all that remained of "men." Bigorneau was dead. How does a dead person live? How can he pretend?
It wasn't possible — not-pos-sible.
How could he live with this impossibility? It was like thousands of deaths falling on his head, flowing into his heart like lead.
Was it pain, was it No, was it Yes? Was it horror or was it love all the same?
It was a pit of fire of Nothing. Nothing, it's not possible. Neither man nor beast nor fish, nor barnacle on any beach. An empty shell—empty, it's not possible. Without ancestors, all of a sudden. Besides, all the ancestors were already dead, he was the dead man at the end—at the end of what?
It was a terrible WHAT—physiological and like a wound in the heart. A black, fiery wound, an irreparable wound. This wound was perhaps the all-that-is. How can one repair a dead body that still beats?
Pretending is impossible. Or we'll make another corpse—I don't like cemeteries, I don't like all their fuss.
How to survive a cataclysm? It was like millions of years ago.
How did the first Bigorneau get filled with "something" - but the crust was after . There was something before the crust.
There was WHAT?
It wasn't metaphysics, it was proto-physics, burning and bleeding and wounding—yes, you had to put a scab on it to protect that wound, or forget it. "Men" was a scab of forgetting.
Ex-Bigorneau couldn't forget. But we couldn't live like this. It hurt too much.
Nor could one hate those other crusts that live in their Horror, it was like hating oneself, one could not love them either—one could love for nothing, like a kelp fire on the beach, like those great tender eyes that went into death. There was a Tenderness at the bottom of the crust. It was the last silent word of life.
So? So what, for heaven's sake!
This what, was perhaps the first silent word of life.
This Tenderness was perhaps the last word ever found - not livable in that crust.
So, on that "day," our first Idiot, before the sages, the priests, and the non-idiot scholars who followed, began to read the wisdoms of the last of the line of non-idiot thinkers. One day, on a quay of a particular and indeterminate longitude, he grabbed the wisdoms of a thinking crustacean—our modern, bleeding Idiot knew how to read anyway, and he saw this formidable title: Being and Nothingness . Nothingness was well known, it was something to be experienced, but being... what? It went away with big, tender eyes. And he read, stupefied, at the end of five hundred pages of unreadable, non-idiot wisdom:
Man is a useless passion
So, Bigorneau, ex-encrusted and completely idiot, remained mute and silent on this quayside at the edge of a river as black as this man who wrote your number on a death's chest.
It was such a scandal to be able to utter such wisdom... In what country, on what continent of what planet, after a certain number of millennia of bleeding and tender deaths, could one? This wise man, perfectly crustacean and not stupid, should have been stuffed into a Black Wagon to be taught how to live.
And our Ex-Bigorneau 53,766, seized by a Black Scandal, swore that there would be no more—but Never Again—a registration number 53,767 on an empty hull. He took his things and his slaps (besides, he had no slaps but a formidable slap to slap somewhere) and he left forever this black Continent, helmeted, mitred and encrusted, this longitude of Nothingness and Death, to set sail for the "something" that does not yet exist.
And to the Devil.
A wagtail cried out, over there, near an unknown waterfall. And a man was watching.
Perhaps he was a survivor from the vanished worlds?
Oh little one, there is an old wound that cries out deep inside a man.
Bigorneau wore out his wound for a long time, in so many latitudes and longitudes, on so many quays, and it was always like a deeper hole, like a burning fire—like a despairing nothing. And where was this “something”?... And this nothing was so burning that it was the only thing, like a Yes and a No entwined, like life and death side by side, embraced like a bride and groom in the same body; and sometimes it was one, sometimes it was the other. When it was too impossible, he went further, to change scenery, and this “further” was another hole that snatched him up ahead, like a nothing that would still be. What would an old first Bigorneau be like who wanted to become a man over there, at the end of centuries? What would a worthless old man be like who wanted to become “something” over there, at the end of… what? At the end of his wear and tear, perhaps. You have to have worn out a lot of skins, birds and little creatures, and endless fellows who weren't so good. So Bigorneau walked and walked, because that's the only thing a two-legged man could do. Dig his hole out of nothing to go... somewhere. And each time, on a quay here or there, a mask fell: it hurt a little more, it burned a little more, it was like going against the world—against everyone, devils, gods, snakes, and noise. It was like a great Thirst, like an old, endless desert that continued simply because it was thirsty.
He threw himself at everything, the good, the bad. And nothing was good, nothing was bad. Or the two embraced like lovers, like a thirst for more. To stop was death, "somewhere" was death: it was the instant crustacean. He didn't want
"To succeed," at anything, was the success of the old definitive and triumphant crusts, and he didn't want to fail because that meant more cuttlefish bones from an old cephalopod on a beach—this "cephalo" was an old Misfortune. What did he want, this poor walking Bigorneau?
What-is-not-yet.
It is very difficult to become what does not exist. It is night and night without the next eyes.
But if I'm looking for it, it's because it exists! he said to himself - it already exists , otherwise I wouldn't be looking for it, just as a first cell already contained its old, worn-out cephalopod. We must wear the old man out even more.
Where is the Not-yet Path?
There is no path! You have to pierce it in your own skin. On a quay of despair, he stopped one day.
He closed his eyes like a man alone at the end of the world. Then an old Tenderness looked into his eyes.
I loved I loved so many things that pass by
I loved the strong wind and the surf and the free bird on its rock I loved this tender face and this mother like the open sea I loved I loved so many things that pass by
But this wind told me something else and this face smiled at me from elsewhere and this bird flew through my heart for ages
I have loved I have loved so many misfortunes and walked with sorrow like the ages
And I finally loved what beat in my heart everywhere what sang in my sorrows everywhere what smiled in everything I loved You who are my journey and my open sea and my ocean at the end of sorrows and paths
Oh You, my bird so old so always singing I did not know I did not know that I always loved you since always
You are my heaven and my hell and my joy and my sorrow and what always-always sings With a cry also of not having loved you always of not having known what I knew for ages with the rocks and the undertow and the whatever that passes that passes that is always
So, this old Tenderness looked him in the eyes.
— Oh little one, you are sad and you don't know why...
He looked up, but he saw no one, he didn't yet have his eyes of tomorrow. There was a tree at the edge of the quay. And suddenly he smelled a scent of honeysuckle, like on the paths of the Semaphore, but it didn't come from anywhere, it enveloped him. He looked again, and nothing moved, his body became completely still like the smooth flowing river, like a nothing that flowed and flowed with the river, perhaps forever.
—Kid, you're just beginning... You're at the beginning of the world.
You believe you were born on the banks of this black river, a few years ago, born of this mother and this father, you believe you traveled in this Black Wagon, a few days, but you traveled a long, long time on my River, you lived among many ruined men who did not know why, you succeeded and perished in many ruins built by you, you prayed in many temples, here and there, and your heart remained heavy and deceived, you wandered with a dagger of murder and revolt, but it was your heart that stabbed itself because it was No and again No, because it was necessary to end all that, you loved and desired this face and that other, and you deserted them, and you loved again because one must love something, but your heart remained like a hole in the rock that is so thirsty, you sailed on this galliot and that other, slave and master on board, and still thrown into this black hold for days and days that were nothing but the night of Horror, but it was your heart again that chose this hold, that wanted and wanted so much to pierce this Night and this Horror forever, and you sank, sank body and soul without Good ever, in a poignant Nothing that was like the only poignant beat of the world, and you started again to find what poked so much under this skin or another, this latitude and so many others, you traveled and traveled centuries of hope and pain, of good and evil, without ever finding a port, because your heart is infinite like my great Sea, and you died so many times that your heart is heavy with all these deaths for nothing, with all these pains never filled, as if it were Death that walked to live and Life NEVER.
O little one, you are at the beginning of Time, will you perish again, like the millions and millions before you - who were you.
She fell silent, and this second of the river was so still, so poignant, that she was like a pearl of Eternity on the edge of a first Sea, so full that she was going to burst with a great surge of love on a first breaker.
— Oh Mother... Mother of Tenderness, said the little one who was clinging there on his rock, Oh Mother, I have suffered so much.
There was still that Silence that smelled of honeysuckle, and everything was still like an immense question without a word, like a first murmur that has not yet murmured on the shores.
"I've been through so much," the boy repeated.
And it was like the first ripple of the world's sorrows.
- Little...
There was such great tenderness in this Voice of no language which nevertheless blew gently like a light breeze on a moor of fennel, like music forgotten and returned.
—Little one, you finally come to my first wound, to this Joy that has covered itself with so many scabs, to this Love that has covered itself with so many masks, to this Life that has covered itself with Death to finally find what it has in its belly, and to untie the wounding Enigma and run on my shores of Tenderness without needing to leave for the death of the Heavens, nor for the Olympus of the gods, nor for the Styx that toils, to begin again. It is necessary to untie the Enigma, to heal the old wound in your body, here-now, in your first bare rock, your matter of the Beginning that contains its end — and its Meaning for the Earth.
- But...
— Listen, child, there are not thirty-six or 53,766 matters, of man, bird or volcano, there is only one. There are not thirty-six salvations, elsewhere or in the Heavens, there is only ONE — salvation is on Earth, in the Earth, in your body, where my first wound was born.
And his voice became deep like the roar of a distant sea.
—And the Earth, you hear, the Earth, now, like you, must find its Meaning and its true healing, or die once more.
Then everything fell silent.
She had disappeared in the scent of honeysuckle.
There remained a bare quayside by a river that flowed and flowed and flowed... There was such a deep silence in the soul of this child.
A silence that went far into the depths, like in that third night of the Black Wagon that sank, burning, against a bare rock where clung, mortal, the null shell of a child of man, who was no longer a man, who was what?
For a long time—seconds or years—he remained in this silent burning, as if struck dumb, and it was so silent, so vast that it reached Ages where no one was yet, except the sea and the winds and a first undertow; and it was so heart-rending with the burning of Nothing under some star that it almost made a cry, a fault, so terrible that it was going to burst like a volcano of the first times and split this bare rock.
Then a Fire began to rise from the depths of Time, from the depths of a first living being under some star, and it was like a dull cataclysm, all-powerful, irresistible, unbearable, as if a first Life seized Death to tear it apart from top to bottom, to belch it out and invade with its impossible Fire this worthless and stunned carcass which would have almost cried: but I am going to die! and it was Death who died under this impossible lava, thick, dense, implacable, which rose-rose from the depths of the belly of the earth and tore, lacerated, crushed and uprooted an old dead man who had always believed himself to be alive.
A cataclysm of silent fire.
No, there would never be another 53,767. It was the Black Wagon that had exploded.
It was a shattered world.
It was an impossible "Thing" that was beginning, that was bursting all the little dead who live, all the little worlds that rig and cheat, all the little ghosts that howl and bargain, all the little meaningless passions that murder each other—all the old delirious zoology—to force them to be or to disappear.
Up there, down there, there were times, the Great Mother had said, and her Voice was like a quiet storm covering a black horizon: "My Pain wants to obtain the answer from men... by any means."
For his Pain, which is the pain of the Earth, is not to be this Joy, this Love, this Life which broods under our Rock of Lies.
His Wound, which is our wound, is not being what we are.
— Hey! Passerby...
It was on a quay here or there, on the Amazon, the Nile, the Ganges... It was, where do I know?
"I don't even know anymore," he said to himself.
It was just this breath of lava rising and rising, vibrating like a thick tide, and this little living thing through which it passed, like a disemboweled creature, like a newborn of the earth. It was incomprehensible. It was like a terrible miracle.
It was very SACRED.
But nothing in the world is sacred like that!
No place. Except, perhaps, a first wind blowing through a virgin forest, and a bird looking at these branches, these leaves, these trembling shoots, and him, inside: a look. And then it sings, because this Miracle must be sung. We must shout, roar, whistle, flutter over the smells and buzz to say that we are in this Miracle: an I-am-there everywhere, with the branches, the leaves and the young shoots, and this miraculous breath coming out of a black womb. We want to shout it everywhere, to be with everything, in everything, like the same song of nothing, for everything, because that is this miracle of being.
This young shoot that was not yet a Bigorneau, nor a frog nor anything that knows itself, oh! this "itself" that all of a sudden came out of the black belly and closed all the doors of the world and forgot its song. It was like an immense oblivion that had encrusted itself to forget its oblivion, to enclose this over-vastness, and that had built grammars to learn its world and its language, and everything was profane, and nothing was lived except the pain of being... nothing. And "you" and "I" made things to take, to subjugate or to swallow, to hate and fear or to concubine to enlarge the band in this stone castle or this church, under this banner or that other, on an old black belly that sang all by itself and sprouted new seeds as if by miracle, as if in hope always, as if in expectation always and in the future of always that slept there under this old belly... unknown.
But they had already done the grammar of the unknown.
—Hey! Stranger, what country are you from?
- Lady...
Bigorneau scratched his head. Suddenly he was a Bigorneau again, wearing a man's hat and carrying a passport.
But we no longer "pass" anywhere - nothing passes. Or nothing passes.
So the brand-new Bigorneau started walking because it was the only thing he had been taught well. And suddenly, he remembered a very old maritime language that whispered: one must cross.
And always this moving lava, denser, more imperious each day, which rose from under the soles of his feet, invaded his legs, his thighs, his trunk, and came to knock and knock against this thinking Bigorneau cap, and again and again, like a formidable floodgate released into the belly of this earth, like a formidable breath from the other side of the worlds, and sometimes this old crustacean fellow despite everything, even disemboweled and worthless, felt seized with panic... what is it? what is happening? The unknown? But even a first virgin forest under some star is a known product emerging from the black belly: a first miraculous bird sings its Miracle; and he, Bigorneau... what was he singing? He wasn't singing at all, he was even stunned as if in an earthquake, with a kind of intoxication despite everything because his keel was rolling on an unknown sea, a land that wasn't firm at all - all our former "unknowns" are lived, felt, smelled, breathed thousands of times in our skin, piled up millions of times in our caves; the Amazon, he knew it by heart. But That ?... And Bigorneau looked at his paws in amazement, like John the Idiot, his paws so heavy with "something," rolling into the Unknown. No, it was not, or no longer, like an old tree sucking the sap of old Night—it was from a night before Night, it was a new Sap tearing at the very Womb of old Night and of all those known trees that bore a fruit of death to live on, of all those recorded species that bore young of death to make dead people one day who hoped to live on. No, it was something else—Something Else. It was no longer “life”! There was no death in it! Or was it the womb of Death opening onto something else. And it was very SACRED, it was incomprehensible, it was another Birth that did not come from the mother, the good mother Lisette of an old quay over there — which was no longer Breton or maritime, all the quays of the known world were swept away by an imperious storm, gushing forth, blown from an unknown womb that was nevertheless the Womb of the Earth, but what Earth? No, it was no longer the geographical and grammatical earth of the old grammarians of Death and the liturgical earth of the old priests of Death... it was... a terrible Miracle.
And suddenly, Bigorneau said Thank you to the Black Wagon, Thank you to all his troubles, his countless sins, Thank you to all his nothings... because he would have remained in the Nothing-forever if he had not gone through that old cataclysm.
And he said Thank You to Death because, without it, he would never have cried out to finally live, to break and deliver this old crust of thinking crustacean, this void and this nothing who believed himself full and a man forever on this old galley.
Now it was necessary to cross this other Cataclysm... unknown, this terrible Miracle in reverse which had not yet found its song nor its language, nor its means of living.
He followed the coast, the line of rocks, the white sand where the black-headed gull perches, and the wise, all-black cormorant perched on the breakers—there was no mistaking it: there was a coast; but his heavy, strange steps, which he walked with, swayed a little as if under the breath of some Poseidon, and he begged for his bowl of rice, or anything here or there, because one must, after all, feed this sort of walking thing, but it wasn't that which fed, it was like an old wake that he was dragging. And in that, there was a strange trade wind which vibrated, which always rose from the depths of the Unknown. This vibration, this heavy and yet so light wave that furrowed him from one side to the other, this is what he listened to, it was like his silent Secret, and it was so inexpressibly sacred... He listened, listened, as if it were going to speak his secret, take him to his unknown North, carry him and guide him like a bird.
What does it listen to, a bird-not-yet? A "something" that breathes an impossible air, subterranean and imperious, a sap rising from no tree, and that struggles to know what it is, to be able to live what it is in an old, holey shell that was once human, on an old coast that does not know its North. Yet they had traced coordinates, latitudes, longitudes on this small globe of yesteryear, they had made a careful cage to catch the wild bird, they had found sextants, set lighthouses and beacons to navigate their ship. But the galley was sinking and the men on board were going mad, mutinying and killing each other to grab the last supplies in the holds. And the holds were empty.
The holds were empty. They had emptied everything.
The wild bird had spread its wings and left the shore, the bird of always that had sailed on their land and others, lodged on this ship or others and in their hearts, but their hearts were empty like their hold, and it was sinking because there was nothing left on board, and the masters on board had lost the North.
He, the bird-not-yet, he listened, listened to this beating of wings which said nothing, this Vibration so heavy and so light which rose, like a quiet storm from the depths of the Ages, from the depths of a Nothingness which was a formidable "something" in the middle of the disaster of the old crustaceans in their shells as empty as their hearts and their holds.
But there has been more than one empty shell since time, on old vanished beaches, more than one fossil skeleton to make the stubborn Future, and what was this stubborn bird that still beat and beat in a thirsty heart to make the Future in spite of everything, or because of everything?
Was he going to make improved skeletons, or what?
It was the question beating in his heart, the Vibration that gives life. The Question that gives birth.
The bird of all time has no need to do geography or coordinates, nor to cage the Miracle, it lives all of geography with a single stroke of its wing and its laughing coordinates at every moment.
But him, the bird not yet born or impossibly born in this earthquake under his feet, incomprehensibly there , without sextant or compass?
The galley was sinking.
Death took back his property.
And him? This one, living in spite of everything, a life that didn't know itself, as if it had emerged from its own grave.
Then that beating of wings vibrated in his heart, and he turned away; he left the coast, the laughing gulls, the ports, the docks, and this galley that was sinking from the bow.
— Go up there, there's a man who knows.
Seemed to say that thing that vibrated in his heart, like a first breath of no language.
It was immediate geography.
But still, there was that old grief bleeding in his heart. And why?
There are so many old graves in a man.
He had lived so much and it was like the Misery of all these men together, tears never cried, tenderness never spoken. Courage that went away at the dawn of no true day and silences that went away in their Silence of always, with a tenderness like their love of the world left, of a lost and desolate mother. Ah! will we ever be born?
Yet he was born, this little man, at a fabulous and unknown dawn, but what use were all the dawns and all the fables to him, if a heart is tormented somewhere, if a love goes off all alone into the old Night of the Earth, if a little one out there comes and goes and runs and bumps into nothing, if an old shipwrecked man from the old galley sinks into this senseless hole, into this old ocean that keeps everything, the pains and the loves and the hopes, the despairs, the deaths that begin again to hope. It was a Misery so profound that it made a jewel of fire in the center of this abysmal heart, or a wound that bled from all these pains that never healed. It was his firebird, his wild gull that beat its wings on its rock all alone. And were we not born to be all together in the same wild and tender wave, in the same cry? Where was the meaning of all these endless roads, of all these badly veered capes? And these green buoys blowing here and there an immortal cry for the great wind?
He went, this little man, this newborn of a great question, he climbed the unknown path, led by this beating of wings, this bird of fire which was like his own beating heart. He walked for a long time with his lava from the bottom which rose - rose, dense and imperious, unstoppable, like a first cataclysm for a first life under some star.
And he arrived at the first snows up there, which were so like that dazzled cry when the slides of the Black Wagon opened onto the great Nude.
— I was waiting for you, little one.
A wagtail flew away with a cry, carrying a drop of water it had drunk from the small waterfall. It was going to the plains and the great river to sow its cry for whoever would hear, for whoever would—and whoever would? It was going to sow a small drop of clear water for whoever was thirsty.
— Oh little one...
His blue gaze wandered into infinity, wandered into the infinity of a little man's heart, lost there as if through centuries.
And the child drank that second which satisfied everything, which filled everything like the Victory already won over all the nights and all the pains, like the Balm which erases everything in a Love which was always-always. Like a Coronation. And where was the stony path, where the not-there? It was all there , one could get lost there like a little snowflake in the great snow...
Then the Old One looked again, and it was another second, and the blue of his eyes had become like fire, like a bottomless treasure of fire, and the little one shuddered. It was a great wild beating of wings through the seas of his body, it was like a cry not yet cried.
The child drank this second of fire which came to join the fire of his heart and the old Wound and this lava which rose from the deep depths, as if he suddenly remembered centuries and a land and the little ones of the Night who ran without knowing.
And the Old Man spoke in a language that made a great beating of wings through the years and the foam, that made like a forgotten and returned music. And the little one shuddered again in his heart and in his body, like the laughter that runs across an uncalmed sea.
— You drank my second of snow, but why would you have come by this long stony road if it is to melt there and make a drop of snow, which will go away by the great river — keep my second of snow at the bottom of your days and the pebbles of the long road, it will carry you silently in its old Silence of always. But you were born for a cry, you were born for a song, you were born for a Love burning under the old rock of the years. And you carry the old crust of the centuries to tear from it its Enigma and its Miracle, otherwise why would you have walked all this long road and worn out so much pain and so many bodies, if it is to make one more drop in the old river and break yourself on the old Rock always the same?
He fell silent, and it was another quiet second, as if all had always been quiet beneath this old world that rolls among the stars and flashing lights of the universe.
— These fires call you to the adventure of the universe. And you are a second of fire of the Great Mother who lit these universes and who suffers because no one has yet given a living body to her Joy, to her Tenderness, to her conscious Powers — they all go into death to seek what is there, they all go into the heavens or the hells to seek what is there, they all enclose in a false crust the Power that is there. And the Miracle always runs across unknown seas with its cry of a wild bird...
The little wagtail came to drink another drop and ran away with a cry.
— You are this cry, you are this fire, you are this Miracle that awaits, you are the child of the Great Mother who wants her Miracle—by any means necessary—who wants her true Earth and her song and her conscious men who were not made for eternal recommencements. Nothing has begun, little one! You are at the beginning.
The little boy opened his eyes wide, he was as if lost and found, he understood and did not understand, he emerged into an unknown that was too new, without language...
—Yes, indeed! Child. For all this earth and all the particles of this earth are made of the substance—you understand, the substance—of the Great Mother, Bigorneau included. There is only ONE. And it is She who labors in you, it is She who labors beneath all these men to deliver Herself and deliver them from this dreadful Lie... by all means, Black Wagon included. We are the sons of the Great Mother, we are, we are. We are the sacred sons beneath all this desecration of men and we must become what we are.
And all of a sudden, this dense lava that rose from the depths of the earth, from the depths of torn centuries, through this body of a small man and that struck there against this cranial carapace, gave a last thrust and burst into the open air like a white volcano. And everything was white. And it rose and rose again, but in such dense air, it rose endlessly as if to pierce infinity, and it... it, what? this little shell underneath like a bridge, a tiny bridge, between this black density that rose and this other Density, this same white, crushing Density that rose in its bottomless and endless air, as if the two ends of the world were joining in a white triumph.
Were they seconds, were they days, or were they months?
The child looked with wide-open eyes at this Old Man, this waterfall, this shell, the trail of his footsteps that had climbed up there, it was perfectly physical, and it rose and rose again through this old shell, but it was another air; he felt his breath but it was another breath, he saw his feet that had walked so much, it was concrete, it was there , but it was another "there"... strange, incomprehensible, overwhelming, like a first there in the world on a great beach of snow, and the Old Man who was watching. One would have said that he was smiling.
Everything was the same and everything was different. Then there was a stop.
And all of a sudden, without anyone knowing why, that same white Density, that same white Volcano, that same crushing Breath turned around and began to descend - descend into that little shell...
But I'm going to burst!
He was stunned and gripped and crushed like modeling clay; and now, instead of banging and banging against this cranial carapace, it banged and banged as if under his feet, against an invisible carapace below which was like the whole earth, as if he and everything else were the same crust of lead—a tremendous pounding. With each breath, this crushing Breath descended, banged below, bounced back up and down again and up and down again... in-de-fi-ni-ty. It was a Power. A Niagara of solid Power, as unstoppable as the black floodgate which had opened beneath his feet in this hole of Nothing which screamed and screamed so much to have a Meaning in the midst of these living dead.
It was like a gap between two universes.
He landed in another world which was nevertheless the same, pounded and crushed by a formidable “Something”, which was like the Life of life.
He landed in the Mystery.
He landed in a terrible Miracle, which was like the Miracle of the Earth, him, very small and very similar, like a first living being who does not know very well how to breathe that air.
But deep inside her body and in those millions of cells, there was something that smiled like a first sun, that recognized its impossible miracle and its first smile to the world. And it was She who smiled.
"Now go to your work," the Old Man said simply. The child looked and looked without understanding.
Mechanically, or with that wild flapping of wings, he took the same path again, step by step and heavily, crushed and pounded by that wild air which made a million little smiles in his frightened and upset body.
He sat on a rock, he looked at the plains over there, a little pink, and the great River that flowed from the little waterfall, the same, and nothing was the same anymore. He looked for a long time. And that incomprehensible Power that hammered his body and the rock beneath him, that kneaded and kneaded this old carcass like modeling clay, and it resisted, it crushed as if he were a package of iron, as if he were the birth of a new life and the dying of the old life, Life and Death together in the same skin, the impossible and the possible, like an old fish from the abyss thrown onto the beach of millennia, and it was millennia that struggled in his skin, and like a year zero that absorbed this Sun through a million pores.
That Sun was lovely.
He took a few steps, and again he sat down on a rock. He looked and looked without understanding, and it was his whole body that looked and understood without understanding, understood with a little cry everywhere, a million little moaning and smiling cries that was yes and yes a million times, because there was only YES or... what? The yes, it was beating and walking, it was this step and again this step, it was the only Possible or... what? Dying, that didn't exist—it didn't exist! It was the dream of the millennia of old Night, his whole body cried it out. He was in an indefinable chaos.
He took a few more steps, he looked at his walking chaos, but walking nonetheless, it was an impossible Miracle, but a miracle nonetheless, a breath nonetheless with each step a little more possible.
And then, this adorable thing that was so full, so “being,” like a sunny density of being.
Then he stopped, suddenly seized in his whole body, in those millions of little smiling pulsations, and it was a cry, a single cry torn from the old Night, an obviousness like nothing had been obvious since our nocturnal millennia: But it is... a for-mi-da-ble POSSIBLE!
And everything changed before his eyes, his old man's eyes still there, looking suddenly at the future, the present and tomorrow together, but a tremendous TOMORROW, living-beating-smiling and impossibly possible - it was there , it was being lived, it was the living Miracle of every second that was breathing. "But if I'm living it, it's because everything can be lived!... I'm an old Bigorneau like everyone else!" And what this "I" was, he didn't know very well, it was an old, widespread and porous I that drank - drank this tremendous Possible. It was of the same species, and yet it was another species... chaotic.
And suddenly, he understood the chaos of the earth. It was all of the same earth. It was the same Earth rolling and struggling in an enormous Impossible that was to become Possible, in an enormous NO of rock that was to open on the old fault, in an enormous nothing of night that was to gape at "something" at last, at the only Yes that gives life. And there was only one body that could cry that out through its millions of cells, through its millions of suffocations in the old ruins. Their heads were crazy, their land was ravaged, but a CRY could spring forth from the old fertile chaos as it had spring forth many times in other asphyxiated and dying species that had only one body left to live and walk, or make another skeleton thrown ashore by the surf and the strong wind... But there will no longer be anyone with a counter to say that this skeleton was so many millions of years old, because it will be a New Earth and another air and another species without a crust around it.
So, Bigorneau took a few steps, and he understood something else. But this was a Scandal such as he had never experienced before on an old wharf in the western latitudes:
They don't know their own ways anymore!
They no longer know their own ways...
Bigorneau took a few more steps, it was heavy and crushing, but it was the old keel that weighed, it was light and fluid like a first morning breeze, it was a first morning on an old world that was sinking, it was necessary to invent the new way! it was necessary to walk in this something that rustled on an unknown sea, one step and another step, it was the old hull that weighed, it looked like bones, a skeleton that struggled, walked-walked all the same in... something - it was so light and impalpable, and crushing in this old crust, it was Life itself that walked in an old dead man, thousands of dead people piled up: a layer and another layer in a mortal and... inexistent prehistory. He looked at the slightly pink plains and this river that flowed and flowed, and these thousands of men still standing who walked happily, and quickly, quickly, quickly in their own death standing, in their leaden non-existence and which sank through a thousand portholes, in their perpetual galley which had had enough of its galley and which was sinking to make still small skeletons, improved and indubitable, like the dinosaurs, the plesiosaurs and the rest. They did not have the means to do anything else! they had lost all the means to move on to anything else, even their cells were chemical, they were encrusted once and for all in their Science which knew everything, or would soon know everything, and in their celestial or infernal Salvations for eternity from the Good Lord or the Devil - good heavens! it is not possible to be so blocked. And Bigorneau looked and looked... the Great Imposture of the learned, thinking and digesting crustaceans, and as primitive in their Science as in their Religion.
It was sinking, lady! And they didn't know the way out. They had been encrusted with every possible means of not knowing their own knowledge and not living their own lives and not smiling in their own bodies, they had been robbed of their own lives and their own miracles and their own eyes—they had seen everything at the end of their microscopes and their sacred catechisms... and no one had noticed that this world seen and telescoped and X-rayed and irrefutably provided with a celestial and baptized God was a world seen by crustacean eyes, thought by crustacean brains and sanctified by crustacean gods—if you get out of there, it's something else. But no one knew how to get out of there! No one knew their own secret. They were in a black super-luxury wagon with antennae on all sides and highly improved pincers and hooks for digesting the neighbor. They only knew how to improve death. They only knew how to expand their crustacean Self, their crustacean Religion, and their crustacean means to encompass in their madness those less encrusted than themselves, until the whole earth was a single, solid, asphyxiating crust.
But...
But there was a merciless Miracle deep within Matter that wanted its own miracle—by any means necessary—and blew it all up. There was a Great Mother in there who wanted her sons conscious and smiling, and with their own miraculous and immediate powers and their own Joy in a body. It resisted everywhere, in Bigorneau's skeleton as in the body of the whole earth, but the very resistance built the intensity needed to break Resistance, and the Great Mother pounded and pounded this Earth to deliver her own buried Joy, her great wild bird, and her deathless Tenderness.
Bigorneau took a few more steps, and it was still working—it was moving... everywhere. He was being crushed and pounded and kneaded like modeling clay, but he saw the Great Miracle in motion, and it was so fabulous, so marvelous in the chaos! Finally, we were going to get out of all this Misfortune and this Lie—by the right means. By what we ARE.
Slowly he descended back to the plains and the tumult and the sorrows, and he made all sorts of discoveries along the way, with every step, as if it were springing forth of its own accord.
January 12, 1997 Vivekananda
The world is other than we now think and see, Our lives a deeper mystery than we have dreamed;
His body was all heavy and creaking from all the iron mesh of this skeleton, this old thing that he had carried around for centuries, but he persisted like the old Wild Bird that had pushed and pushed through so many species and misfortunes... fortunate, because he knew that each step of this Misfortune was finally preparing a CRY, slowly, silently accumulating a Force, an Hour of start, or of Leap finally into the Reality of this earth and of this man asphyxiated and robbed of his joy.
It was heavy and creaking, and suddenly Bigorneau looked at this old, rickety thing—but why! And it was as if the body itself, these millions of little smiling things, were wondering why? That Breath was so light and so fluid, and at the same time so crushing—why?... Then, all those little smiles were gathered into a great, sunny Smile, light as a shiver, like the laughter on a first Sea never touched by a storm, and... Bigorneau began to slide, literally slide over this old ground, like the swallow, like the seagull skimming the silvery foam, for a moment... Look!
He said, "Hey!" and boom, bang, he landed on his two leaden legs with all sorts of little creaking noises in his keel. "Ah! But... what's all this?"
He sat down on a rock and began to consider these strange things—all at once he had “considered” and everything had become considerable, but then heavy, massive, and irreducible like death itself.
So he put on his old stubborn Bigorneau face again—"My name is Bigorneau, and you can't fool me." So he said on an old Breton quayside years ago. Bigorneau had always liked to "understand," even John the Idiot, and he understood everything—that is to say, he wanted to touch everything. "Lady! That's not logical!" he said to himself, there on his rock. Then there was that flapping of wings... It's strange how the wind was always his friend, the breeze that flows everywhere with a smell of moor and salt. He looked again. "But what weighs? What hits down there, and we fall back down...?" There is only one Matter, said this Mother of Tenderness: man, bird, or volcano. And there were all these little crusty things everywhere, all over the earth, by Jove, and they were in their volcano, but yes!
They were all in their "miracle upside down," without understanding anything, and it was pushing out all the creatures of lost ages, hyenas, snakes, monsters who had disappeared and returned, piled up neatly in their cavern which was pleasant and distinguished, and it was no longer pleasant at all. It was a divine invasion. Everything was coming out under this surge of lava which wanted to pierce this Lie, once and for all, without having to start again all the little painted grimaces which were lying in wait there under this thinking shell. It was necessary to get out of all this old Swamp, which also grew lotuses and pretty flowers. They were all in the great Quagmire which stirred and which showed its deadly and venomous claws - all of Death was struggling wildly to keep its Kingdom forever. But it was over! One last thrust in there and the great Imposture would be pierced forever, we could live at last, right side up—in the Miracle right side up. And it pounded and pounded, crushed the old hull of Bigorneau like the rest... right side up. It was the hole of the Miracle. One last thrust from the Great Mother, and then... and then! But he would jump for joy, this Bigorneau, he would leap in a fabulous, tremendous Earthly Relief, their calculated Gravity would fly away in a burst of laughter like no one has ever laughed in the world, it would be another world, a light man! As much as it weighs, as much as it can lift! It was only the heaviness of their own shell. And suddenly, there was such a Smile in Bigorneau's body, that he began to slide again, slide, like the swallow on the old stony path, it was like an intoxication, it was a game of living, a great fabulous game with all sorts of metamorphoses in an airy flesh that breathed as if for the first time in the world, like the laughter on the old ever-changing Sea that went away into infinity.
Then a well-known Voice enveloped him in its honeysuckle scent, and simply said, "Later." And he fell back to the ground on his leaden legs.
"Now, let's get to work."
And the pounding crush took up its old pestle in the mortar named Bigorneau. But now Bigorneau knew, because his whole body knew: one day, perhaps soon, perhaps tomorrow, at any unexpected second, that Mortar will be pierced through the bottom and the two universes will join in a True Matter that will smile with all its sunny atoms. And then, you will be able —and everything will be able to experience its own Divine Miracle. Which it IS.
He sat for a long time on the stony path. Already, the tumult of the plains rose up to him and a few temple bells. An old memory also rose up to him from all this path of men, his path... Two kites traced circles in the crystalline air and pursued each other and crossed with a high-pitched cry, then moved away on another slight curve to meet again with the same cry of love—was it always? And him, where was he? He felt a great weariness in his body, crushed there on this stony path, this old body of so many paths, of so many circles, he knew and no longer knew, he had lived so much and it was like an instant, and this Memory was a weight too, it was rich and it was mixed with so many sorrows which also made circles in the light air to close, for an instant, and find again the same cry of love, or of I don't know what hope—was it always? What was this weight, or this pain, or this love nonetheless, which carried these long circles to always find themselves...
He closed his eyes for a moment, and everything went silent, and it was like up there with the Old Man of the Years. He drank in that second of snow.
It sank there, oh! as if in an always-always. Everything was motionless, but as nothing is motionless on this whirling earth, like a rock of eternity but of an eternity so tender, so sweet, like two swan wings closing over the old pain of the world, and of a silence, but as nothing is silent in the world, not even the sleeping bird—a Silence that went away over great lakes of snow, over great wings of endless Tenderness, with nothing moving, with nothing closing anywhere, with nothing remembering here or there, it was there everywhere, they were like two great wings of an eternal swan that embrace everything, that envelop everything, that carry everything, that erase all pains and cries and bring them back to their eternal Place, to their everlasting Sweetness. There, it was always-always in a great down of snow and love.
He drank in that second of snow. And then he opened his eyes; the kites traced their light circles in the crystalline air and joined with a single piercing cry, and he... he, who? He emerged from long centuries of a second of snow, all fresh, all new, as if born at that moment, his eyes lost in an immense distance all there, the stony path all wrapped in tranquil sweetness, oh! so tranquil, as if nothing had ever been but this Tranquil Sweetness with large eyes that cross the Ages.
Then the eyes of the little vagabond from here and now began to blink, to flicker, and it was another wonder! Such as he had never known since he sailed with the little Noroît towards Belle-Île, over there, the most beautiful Lady of all the islands in the world while the little chop gently lapped at her bow—“But it’s still there!” exclaimed our child of the Sea. “I only have to close my eyes for a second, and it’s there! It’s there everywhere, under all the waves, under all the squalls, under all the little pebbles of the road and the breakers…”
He couldn't believe it, this Bigorneau of here and now. Where was the fatigue? The weariness, the old bones to be put back on his back and the unknown of the road? It was all young, all fresh and refreshed - there was no more age, no more "so many years" passing, no more wear and tear! At any second of the road, it was there, all nascent, inexhaustible. It was Time vanquished!
Then he could live as long as he wanted, like the swallow that glides along the path without ever touching it, or being touched. It was the ocean of time that rolled without ever being rolled, only by itself, without ever being broken, only to throw up its light foam, and that flew into its own distance on its old Sea, always changing, always the same—and where is the weariness of the open sea, where is the weariness of infinity? It was light Time!
They had made clocks to count Death, but death no longer counted, it was a great Swan of Beauty carrying away her eternal child, it was an immense YES to everything.
And Old Man No-Name smiled up there, while the little wagtail carried away her drop of water with a cry for whoever is thirsty—and who wants it? Who wants light Time?
Little by little, this Silence invaded him.
He continued on his way, heavily, weightily, perpetually crushed by this Power so fluid, which was each time an astonishment in his body: it became more and more dense, as if, each day, the pestle sank deeper into Matter, like a golden cataract but measured and which seemed to know exactly the limit point, but inexorable, if one can say so, like a lock forever released into Matter - a volcano from above. It was so strange! a perpetual astonishment, perhaps like the first Miracle of a small creature in the world. But there was no language for that, except, yes... it was a great musical wave that unfolded indefinitely, as if coming from the depths of the universe, and that passed and passed endlessly through his body, and went away, perhaps to the other end of the universe, but it was without end or end, always similar, like two immense, undulating Notes, which passed and repassed; a great musical and eternal swell, but without thickness like the sea would be, it was light and vast as no orchestra would be in its theater, like an essence of Music. It was perhaps the song of the universe. It was the first language of the world... A bird's cry comes from a source, it has its tone, its particular meaning, its particular joy, but this wave seemed to come from a thousand sources at once, it was a fullness of sound, an immensity of sound, and yet so light, elusive, and eternally the same. Perhaps it was the Sound of Eternity. Perhaps it was the source of all voices, all languages and music, the source of the trees and the wind and the tide and the meadows undulating in the sun—in men, it became metallic and articulate, as if emerging from a cavern somewhere. There was no longer a "somewhere" in this new child's body; it was open to all the winds.
But in this here-and-now world, it's very difficult to be open to all the winds... perhaps that's why we still need soundproof crusts. It's a metallic and aggressive hubbub, nothing goes off into infinity, everything resonates in its own box.
A shepherd came to meet him, looked at him with a little astonishment, he was all in rags: he saw his own image in the shepherd, as if he suddenly noticed himself. Then the shepherd smiled broadly and offered him a bowl of milk; he was very young and not metallic at all; he said something in an unknown language, but it was the language of his smile and one recognized oneself very well. He took his pipe and it was a nice little cascade, then he turned his back suddenly and went to join his flock. He had come to give a smile.
Perhaps Eternity had created worlds to see the gift of a smile somewhere, or a little song here or there, for nothing, for the great wind and the joy of being, or to listen to a small poignant silence—there are silences that matter in the universe.
And the child of the Great White Swan listened—listened to this world—it was beautiful and terrible.
Houses appeared, men, markets, the comings and goings of the great commerce of men. And all the tumult was there, immediate. He was still in the great silence of his body, and the great Wave passed and re-passed through everything; he was as if in two worlds at once, and the other, the one of here and now, was strangely flat, like a flattened image, like a world in an atlas, a kind of mask—everything was masked, except, sometimes, a lost gaze that wandered into its own silent question. And that too counted in the universe. It was a small note of “something.”
And again the great din of the world: its sorrows, its hatreds, its greeds, its walls everywhere that resonate and resonate against themselves—noise, invasive, armed, contagious, like an immense disease. But then, our new child made other discoveries... Strangely, all the discoveries took place in his body, as if it were the only living, listening, and communicating place. It was the place of understanding, but like at sea when the little sailor suddenly understands the murky color of the wave and the shiver of its sail and the gray of the sky and the change of current and the smell of the wind turning to the East or the North—a thousand little simultaneous things that vibrate in his body and make an immediate whole. But now it was like a deeper body, a body completely stripped of its habit of being a sailor's self or from some known and expected port—it was no longer a self from somewhere, no longer a body from here or there with its entire travel bag on its back. A strange body... innumerable, as in everything, men, things, and beasts, but also assailed by everything.
Then he made a strange and wonderful discovery.
First, the extraordinary purifying power of this Power. As soon as a shadow approached, a "nothing"—a small vibration like a tiny snake coiling around a point of the body—the cells or group of cells affected began to emit a sound, as if their sun were swelling, becoming more intense, more vibrant, and instantly the shadow was dissolved, as if melted by itself. It couldn't enter there, it hurt, it was the pain that hurt! The "nothing" was truly nothing!
Then, the very difficulty of this swarming around him made him perceive a microscopic marvel. These little cells, these millions of little cells, vibrant and flashing and smiling, had a consciousness that no head knew, no sound from up there in its airtight, thinking, reasoning box—there, it didn't reason at all, it knew nothing and it knew everything, but minutely, ex-ac-tively and immediately, without any detour. And it was a musical consciousness. Millions of little musical cells communicating by the same sound: it was in unison or (often, alas) it made false notes, crooked or dark vibrations, arpeggios that fell out of tune as if in a hollow and artificial nothing, sometimes full and true notes that made a little smile of recognition, like honey recognizing honey, like the same love that finds itself again - and this same love was like the center of this music of cells, the very Note of the matter of bodies and of the universe, the there-where-it-is . And it melted everything.
Often, the child of this new body had wondered: but why doesn't it melt? And it was like that sudden, light slide down the stony path... It could all melt, even this obscure, still wiggling, creaking skeleton, it was as if the body knew that. It could metamorphose into a small vibration of pure love. But... there was always that "but," from everyone around, the infernal communion. "Later," that Voice had said in its language of no language that smelled of honeysuckle and tenderness.
This Tenderness was perhaps waiting for other tendernesses that respond to its perfume and its music - It needed a note of response, or a silent call that vibrates beneath the din of our boulevards, a lost silence that listens to its pain and the murmur of an unknown sea... And who listens? And who wants the little pure drop of a bird at the end of its world, at the bottom of its heart as at the bottom of the universes? Who listens to the great Music of the world?
There was a missing Note to bring all this cacophony together and make all these little cells smile together under their spacesuits. Perhaps there was a miraculous Note that would melt everything... at once.
There was a Miracle Time and an Appointed Hour.
There was a great Music waiting deep within the bodies. For there is only one body and a great Tenderness waiting for its deliverance.
He went down to the plains.
For a long time he wandered along the great River that carried its pink and black mud, its garlands, its ashes, and its laughter, its sorrows lost and found, it was as always. And the gong of the temples that recalled an eternal Music—but eternity was in his heart.
He had become very old, this Bigorneau of yesteryear, and yet so young inside, so fresh and musical. A little second of snow and everything was there, the Ages like a smiling wink, the sorrows like a Fire of the body that called him, and it was still Yes to all these men outside who toiled without knowing, who had lost their way and their music.
He would have loved to say so much, this old Bigorneau, wanted so much to sing his silent song, his great Wave of Tenderness that rolled through the universes, that murmured and waited under each little stone, under each little man, in each flake of foam that burst for a moment and joined the rhythm of the suns and the cry of the kites in their round. And everything was linked, everything awaited his cry of encounter, his love never known, his joy never drunk in a drop. How was this possible? How could they live in their walls and their tumult?
And Bigorneau, the old Bigorneau, remained thoughtful on the banks of the River, on the edge of a quay so similar to the Ganges or the Nile or the old golden mud of the Amazon - but no one knew the gold of his heart nor the beating of wings that carried him away without knowing, nor what moves all this and traces the unknown path to arrive by chance at this meeting point and this cry. But all these little smiling cells knew, and endured and waited, and died again to hope.
He would have liked to say and say, this old Bigorneau, to sing about what makes one live in spite of everything, what would make another Life and another man—a new man under some star and a brand new Earth in his old age. What will it take to awaken these passers-by from their hypnosis, these old passengers of so many deaths who have only ever known a few seconds of life and have left with big eyes of tenderness? Are more ruins and cruel Nights necessary, when all love is there and all the Power to change?
She had said "later," and he could still smell that honeysuckle scent like on the Semaphore paths so many decades ago, he was in "Light Time," he could have flown, but it was heavy time here, so heavy and threatening. And he understood well, oh! completely, why She had said "later"... What was the point of starting to fly over the concrete paths and astonishing the onlookers, and erasing the old wrinkles with a new, radiant ray that would attract astonished crowds... for a while. Did one go from fair to fair showing off one's tricks of skill? — but who will show these poor beings, so poor, so destitute, their own skill and their own steps to become what they are, and their own little light waterfall, their little spring that goes far, far away, through time, space, their own eyes and those little smiling cells that can remake their bodies and a whole world. You don't teach anyone their own wings and their own song that would enchant everyone - you had to take the steps, one by one, you had to find your own way!
But what will it take for them to find what makes them live?... Black Wagons again? They have so much science and so many extraterrestrial miracles and salvations, they walk in space, they go to the planets, but they do not know their own Miracle, not a single little cell of their own body which contains all the universes and all the paths of the Future already there; they do not know the only meeting point of everything and the Music which would remake everything. The center of the universe is everywhere! the key, the smiling Miracle. But everything was organized to stifle this Music. Ah! what will it take for them to open the eyes of their body?
And Bigorneau, the old man of so much trouble, remained sitting there on his platform, pounding and pounding this old matter with his body—it was crushing, more and more crushing. And perhaps he would burst out on the other side of all this crust of Lies, this Imposture, and everyone with him? It would be such a beautiful dream! Perhaps it was the dream of all this old Matter that could no longer bear to be mocked and profaned and faked...
Of course, he could leave this old skeleton at will, he was tired sometimes, and start again in a baby of a man... even more obscured and more rigged, and start all the steps one by one, all the platforms one by one, to find again what his old self had always known? How many times already had he known and forgotten, and
re-known and re-forgotten?
And he persisted, the Wild Bird persisted. He couldn't say no.
"Later" couldn't be much later, there would be nothing left of this poor land and these ravaged men...
Suddenly, the news spread: there was no more news! The Great Breakdown.
No more communications. Nothing worked anymore...
It was a stupefaction, almost a panic. But then, but then?... what?
People stopped in the street, looked at each other, looked at this sudden nothingness, it was more astonishing than a war, a revolution.
It was the revolution of Nothing — a gaping zero.
Nothing, and then nothing worked: no news, no radio, no newspapers, no trains or planes roaring with their palpitation of the world... a great, null silence. The Heads of State could no longer announce their latest improvement of the next century, nor the improvement of the underdeveloped and the fall in prices—nothing was worth anything anymore! The great Peace Mafias could no longer announce their war talks, the "violated human rights" could no longer rape or steal anything—business was no longer going well. No one knew where man was in all this, there was no one to tell him, neither that he was poor, nor that he was rich, nor that he was mistreated—what was he? The howls of the "holy war" had fallen silent, there were no more sanctities anywhere nor anyone to sanctify or kill. The holy gibberish was no longer broadcast and televised, there was nothing left to moralize or demoralize. The latest discoveries were no longer discovered, nor were new diseases, and X-rays no longer uncovered sick men—there were no more sick people, the great illness had fallen silent. There were no more assassinations here, no more explosions there, no more Bulletins of Murders and the great villains next door—in short, people no longer palpitated, they no longer grieved, or were no longer disgusted. The great disgust had fallen silent.
It was a great, terrifying silence.
You couldn't trade in anything anymore, it was an instantaneous drop in prices, even Kalashnikovs and bureaucrats and councils of war and peace councils—there were no more world capitals anywhere, no more hypnotic slogans, everyone was their own capital, no more exchange rates for the franc or the dollar or anything. There was still the oxcart and the potato field next to it. And for urgent messages, you could always use carrier pigeons—but there was nothing urgent anymore, except looking into each other's eyes in dismay. Everyone was naked and no longer understood anything. Even the astronauts were broken down in their spacesuits and could only walk in the sky to observe... what? There was nothing left to observe, except one's own drifting navel.
It wasn't the end of the world, though, but it was a terrible, silent cataclysm, as if nothing existed anymore except the neighbor's chicken coop and the cry of the kite circling in the air. There wasn't even a stethoscope to observe its heartbeat—and yet, it was still beating by itself. But it was suddenly very lonely. It was frightening. And suddenly there was no unemployment, everyone had to make their own two legs and arms walk, there were no more borders anywhere.
The thinking crustaceans no longer knew what to think. Then everything suddenly got better.
There was no more theory to be done—everyone had to make up their own, on the spot. It was appalling.
But simple hearts, assailed bodies, suddenly felt like an invisible weight lifted, a disquiet of living gone into another Rhythm.
It was another life, you had to learn everything by other means.
But the little nightingale sang and the laughing gull ran over the foam of the light world.
February 12, 1997
Saraswati
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