written forConversation Jan 2020
a piece of moving image (
about suspended language and the sea
I am in the middle of something, something I could not distinguish.
I want to say something about the distance. An affirmation, a proof. Deep down I know these voices inscribed in my body are infinitely unreachable to anyone else, and I don’t wish to know my position in this fundamental foreignness. I feel that I have used up my strength just writing like this, failing my words, or someone else’s. I am a little bit scared.
I might be able to tell you what the sea is to me. It doesn’t have to be so many particular things: a soft, nebulous substance, an undertone of universal, transient and flowing speech. Flowing. The desired yet-to-be-known.
Sometimes I imagine it to be an infinite being, although it is already the border of so many other beings. Is the sea its own border? The sea on the border, the sea in the middle, the sea in between the middle and the border…I do not know.
I shall never look at the sea at night again. The sea flows infinitely in the night: it listens to its own voices. In my dreams, the water was thick, solid and still, breathing, as if I’m not supposed to. It is open everywhere, yet impossible to be entered. This void of the open sea draws me into the estrangement between words: my tenderness originates from the unknown. I pause and wait. I am already the other to myself.
I cannot tell the sea from the others, but I sense its movement. A secured eternity, a succeeding made without any speaking, the ease of having the sole possibility. I must say the impossible immediately before it is forgotten; I must tread carefully in the light to roam in the dark.
But I am ever infinitely away from the sea, for the sea was never as close to me as I wished it would be. The shortened distance unravels nothing. What was the sea I once encountered? I was standing backwards. Water, gravity, stars and light, the disembodied infinity that destroys time. Totality. The sea is a totality. Sea. Body. Pronounce it, feel the air in your mouth. A named syllable. “Where word breaks off no thing may be.” The words read me and I endure.
Is it still necessary to distinguish the known and the unknown? I am asking for an ambiguous relation, and the state of being known as ambiguous is somehow enough. The language of distinction is assassination, yet I approach. I say what I cannot say, (I write what I cannot write,) and every time it pains me with precisely nothing. “Nothing”, says I, “Is there a reason for speaking?”
Duration. I steal the words I’ve said. I erase myself from the distance in between, cease from answering questions I could not answer. What does it mean to say something? To presume them being true? I fall through the void to the open ground, having nothing to hold yet holding on to everything. I should hide the truths away from words.
What is known to me will matter no longer. What is the darkness I see in the dark? I feel myself guided by the billows. Open your eyes. Close your eyes. The sea is my body. Do I still have something to rely on? Shall I stand, sit or lie down? Shall I simply float? Waves… I am left undetermined.
The sea rings in my ears. I wake up in the room, feeling my legs straighten up and body pulling together. I stand up, crying, waiting aimlessly for an echo, because I knew that this is the only thing the walls could offer: me, hearing my anguish. But I am too close. The walls enclose me, the reverberating void. The echo travels through the air towards me, and when it finally reaches and passes through me, it becomes a murmur, as if I didn’t even dare to cry at the beginning. And this murmur, quiet for the room, silent to me.
I woke up in the abyss, now I shall sleep.
a piece of moving image (
about suspended language and the sea
I am in the middle of something, something I could not distinguish.
I want to say something about the distance. An affirmation, a proof. Deep down I know these voices inscribed in my body are infinitely unreachable to anyone else, and I don’t wish to know my position in this fundamental foreignness. I feel that I have used up my strength just writing like this, failing my words, or someone else’s. I am a little bit scared.
I might be able to tell you what the sea is to me. It doesn’t have to be so many particular things: a soft, nebulous substance, an undertone of universal, transient and flowing speech. Flowing. The desired yet-to-be-known.
Sometimes I imagine it to be an infinite being, although it is already the border of so many other beings. Is the sea its own border? The sea on the border, the sea in the middle, the sea in between the middle and the border…I do not know.
I shall never look at the sea at night again. The sea flows infinitely in the night: it listens to its own voices. In my dreams, the water was thick, solid and still, breathing, as if I’m not supposed to. It is open everywhere, yet impossible to be entered. This void of the open sea draws me into the estrangement between words: my tenderness originates from the unknown. I pause and wait. I am already the other to myself.
I cannot tell the sea from the others, but I sense its movement. A secured eternity, a succeeding made without any speaking, the ease of having the sole possibility. I must say the impossible immediately before it is forgotten; I must tread carefully in the light to roam in the dark.
But I am ever infinitely away from the sea, for the sea was never as close to me as I wished it would be. The shortened distance unravels nothing. What was the sea I once encountered? I was standing backwards. Water, gravity, stars and light, the disembodied infinity that destroys time. Totality. The sea is a totality. Sea. Body. Pronounce it, feel the air in your mouth. A named syllable. “Where word breaks off no thing may be.” The words read me and I endure.
Is it still necessary to distinguish the known and the unknown? I am asking for an ambiguous relation, and the state of being known as ambiguous is somehow enough. The language of distinction is assassination, yet I approach. I say what I cannot say, (I write what I cannot write,) and every time it pains me with precisely nothing. “Nothing”, says I, “Is there a reason for speaking?”
Duration. I steal the words I’ve said. I erase myself from the distance in between, cease from answering questions I could not answer. What does it mean to say something? To presume them being true? I fall through the void to the open ground, having nothing to hold yet holding on to everything. I should hide the truths away from words.
What is known to me will matter no longer. What is the darkness I see in the dark? I feel myself guided by the billows. Open your eyes. Close your eyes. The sea is my body. Do I still have something to rely on? Shall I stand, sit or lie down? Shall I simply float? Waves… I am left undetermined.
The sea rings in my ears. I wake up in the room, feeling my legs straighten up and body pulling together. I stand up, crying, waiting aimlessly for an echo, because I knew that this is the only thing the walls could offer: me, hearing my anguish. But I am too close. The walls enclose me, the reverberating void. The echo travels through the air towards me, and when it finally reaches and passes through me, it becomes a murmur, as if I didn’t even dare to cry at the beginning. And this murmur, quiet for the room, silent to me.
I woke up in the abyss, now I shall sleep.
Is there a word for it? It doesn’t matter if there isn’t.
Hear it. Read it. See it: I’m not speaking. My hand on paper, paper in my hand. The rubber band on my wrist, (w)rist, my hair covering my face, out of the frame.
Fingertips brush against the ink dots, creases and sometimes fingertips.
Did you see that?
Tap. Tap, Frantically tap.
Waiting for something to happen.
Days, I said, days and nights.
I dreamt of people dancing.
Let’s walk to the end of the sea. That way we will never stop. Could I in time bear a sleepless night?
Where is my border? On the border of the sea, in the middle of the sea, in between the middle and the border of the sea…
I do not know.
Response. Response, respond.
Respond to my unremarkable words,
respond to the wave.
Respond to my responses.
Read me by the sea.
This is the sea. This is my sea.
I do not know.
Respond, respond.
I keep sleeping and falling. The sea catches me, embracing and smothering me.
I wake up to a wild self: breathe like water on ice, unavowed detachment. I’m crying again.
Is this now?
When is now? When is when?
When I close my eyes, the sea gets smaller and clearer.
Sea, body.
Turn my back towards the sea, sea, walk over to the sea. Body.
Touch the sea, in the sea.
Sea, sea.
Body.
Sea.
Did you wait for something to happen? Excessive light poured out of the night. This is everything that happened and did not happen. I write what I cannot write.
I was looking for errors but I couldn’t find them. I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the errors.
I couldn’t.
Flee. Flee in bewilderment. We dance tonight.
Seeking is an error.
I should hide the truths away from words.
Sea without details. Tell me something impossible, speak to me. Speak to me until you run out of things to say. Open your eyes.
Respond. We change directions constantly.
Slip into the night, run away from it. Anything can happen.
Sea.
My voice dwindled to silence, and the silence is never heard. At least not in this way.
Paradoxical phrasings. A sigh of great frenzy. Places where the most true emerged.
Understand.
Understand what I did not say, bear with my saying.
Find me things that have escaped.
I have nothing to say, and I’m not saying.
I must be two, or we may be one.