20210701. Brown branches in the foreground.
Green trees in the background.
There are no humans, birds, or insects to be seen.
It was here, in this empty scene, that the fairy tale began.
A story about a mysterious phenomenon, which had baffled scientists for centuries. People had reported seeing fire, sparks, and massive lightning strikes along the entire length of the horizon, but nobody had ever seen anything like it. Nobody. Nobody had ever attempted to find out. There was no written or oral tradition about this mysterious phenomenon that brought life to this point on earth. 20210701. Beyond the large window, the forest, the sky, and everything in-between, there was of course that solitary and disturbed silence which falls so often upon us all, and the feeling, the sight, and the smell of spring leaves.
It is this in-between in which the life of a person might be best described, and of which the lives of others were only meant to serve as a symbol, a parable, a story, a mockery, or a farce adapted by the other.
The life of a person who had nothing apart from this, who spent their days dreaming of nothing, dreaming of nothing more than to be a faceless thing, to be a thing indifferent to the things around them, to the little noises they would make to themself, to the little details they would leave to others, the little gestures they would make to show others they loved them.
All those long years spent sitting in silence, feeling the tiny little touches of their hand on their own body, of their fingertips on their own skin, of their long, thin lips in an un-uttered voice. 20210701. A man in the window
Looks out the corner of his eye
And tells jokes through a microphone
In a whisper
About the boys in school
With redneck looks
And the devil’s dice
Who laughs out loud when he wins
And this is what the French say
When they win
Voir le maître que je suis
See the master that I am 20210701. A photo of a white sheep.
Just to the side of the picture frame, a shepherdess holds a sheepdog in her arms. Its paws are stretched out, with its chin resting on her right shoulder.
In total, this is a mysterious pastoral scene: a rectangular enclosure surrounded by fences and marked by an x, as in a German Expressionist film.
What does a shepherdess need but a sheepdog? 20210701. Three bookshelves are filled from floor to ceiling.
The first is lined with old textbooks, defunct remedies, obsolete tricks, and discarded tales.
The second contains aberrations in herbal medicine, and the theories of abiogenesis, embryogenesis, and descent from parents suggesting that they might have been produced by chance alone.
The third doesn’t contain books, but rather papers, of the physical and of the literary kind, on which the future history of the arts and conflict may be built. Here we register histories of the war, the development of photography, the accounts of world events, local customs, notions of right and wrong, aesthetic conceptions of the past, imaginary connections drawn by missionaries, encyclopaedists, and philosophers, the histories and biographies of generals who marched on the front-lines of the battle for the allied cause, of generals who built up their empires, and of generals who sent their only sons into battle. 20210701. A white sheet of a person’s memory is lifted to reveal a constellation of stories underneath.
Biographical Sketches: of a girl with her braids, her bows, her gloves, her nightgown, her scarf, and her shawl.
Environmental Sketches: of a river, of an amphitheater, of a farm, of a city, of a road, of a flag, of a plane, of a cactus, of an ocean, of a beach.
The Origin of Species: a subjective, psychological, and sociological study of the origins of species.
The Prodigal Son: a tale of youthful idealism, with a humorous first part, and a tragic ending, fittingly, considering the author's notorious fondness for irony. 20210701. A bicycle under the metal railing of the stairs belongs to the building’s manager, who has kept it for his own use primarily, and secondarily for lending to friends who stop by and live in the building for a while.
The building manager is a quiet man who keeps to himself, but occasionally amuses the building’s residents with arithmetical puzzles and logic problems, posted on a small board at the bottom of the stairs.
Word-chain puzzles:
HIM LOVE ONE
HER HAVE ORE
ALL HATE ALE
Anagrams:
STREET = TESTER
ATHENS = HASTEN
ABSOLUTE = OUSTABLE 20210701. Behind two empty chairs, a big cabinet, not very neat, contains books of which the owner is keen to remain very much in control of. Not just the pages, but the entire volumes.
The books have always been a blurry, unreliable, and sometimes even inexplicable catalog of everything produced or consumed by him in his ever more inextricable spatio-linguistic grip. 20210701. The white flowers, a jute sack, and a quilted spread are on the bed. The floor covered in a carpet of woolen masses.
All around the place, the floor has shifted, become more fertile, and various objects have taken on life of their own.
The only thing that seems to have remained constant is the circular opening of the solitary window.
Sometimes the light comes in from the window, at other times through the tiny cracks in the wall. 20210705. A wooden mask belonging to a character in a long-forgotten drama.
Forgotten speech-patterns: accents, intonations, pauses, foot-prints. Italian, Spanish, Arabic, and Portuguese, the Portuguese being the most numerous, and the Arabic and Spanish the least so far as we know.
We can deduce from the general appearance of the room that the party was lavish, perhaps even grandiose, and that it did not leave anyone unsatisfied: everyone, in his or her turn, had something to gain and something to lose.
The question was, how to best allocate these gifts? 20210712. The large arched windows of the brick building are shields from the sun that give the impression of a spacious place, separated from the bustle of the city by a thin curtain. But the walls are almost completely covered in paintings, engravings, and miscellaneous reproductions, evidencing the intensity of his religious passion for the natural world. Standing on the marble flagstones, he would paint with his brush the fragments of a cliff face, or of a tree, or of a human being’s head, as if he were trying to reconstruct the scene from every angle. 20210703. The white lines on the wall are confined to a single point, and the only variation comes from the angle of the floor. Naturally, this gives the illusion of a seamless space, but in fact the walls are carefully constructed, and the variation in the floor makes a more or less conspicuous difference. At the very extreme, the floor almost completely encloses the entire space around it, and, on the other side, a small but barely perceptible bump is made at the junction of the wall and the floor, like the missing piece of an endless jigsaw puzzle. 20210710. The three pictures on the wall mean very different things to different people. A photograph might convey a feeling of profound sadness, or even exhilaration. For example, when you first see it, you may jump to the conclusion that it must be the last picture ever taken by man. A photograph, then, is not just any old picture, but a process through which, over and over, the reconstruction of a single, identical image presents itself to the mind in such a way as to form a narrative. A photograph thus constructed constitutes a lie, and the deception is apparent from the start: the deception is expressed in the perceived image, the object, the time, and the space. It is these three elements that compose the pictures on the wall: the object, the time, and the space. 20210714. Beyond the metal railing, a mirror on the wall reflects the light of my own eyes, my own thoughts, my own actions. How could I live without feeling my soul perish, how could I deal with the demands of the moment by plunging into the married life! At the end of an exhilarating search, I had my savages, I asked for nothing more than to be one of them, to share their days, their pains, their rituals. Alas! they didn’t deserve my adoration: my prayers were unanswered, my faith was shaken, my treasure was uncommitted. I began to live out my days in the country, in search of an occasion when I would be able to perform the miracle I had vowed to give them. Unfortunately, the moment came, and it was equally as disappointing: I fell into a mine, and died trying to get to the other side. 20210716. A red chair, a large couch, and a green tree with ornamental branches occupied the living room. The wooden floors were covered by short-haired carpet, and beneath the surface, a domestic tranquility reigned in this flat that the lady with the little dog lived in until 1965. None of the apartments had been renovated since then. 20210704. The wooden table above the red floor isn’t in fact a table at all. It is instead a platform on which a chair has been positioned in such a way as to make an almost vertical rise from the floor. The words and the numbers on the wooden board are not visible, but the effect is purely and simply to make the body of the table disappear, to make the space correspond to the sound of the words and the numbers, so that the contact of the viewer with the floor, and the subsequent return to the center, is purely a physiological phenomenon. 20210717. Above the couch, a framed painting has arisen. It portrays a small seaside square: two boys are sitting on the harbor wall playing dice. On the steps of a monument, a man is reading a newspaper in the shadow of a sword-wielding hero. A girl is filling her tub at the fountain. A fruit-seller is lying beside his scales. Through the empty window and door openings of a tavern, two men can be seen drinking their wine in the depths. 20210715. A light is hanging from the ceiling, illuminating a row of green plants. From left to right the plants take the following forms:
The violet bougainvillea
An oleander
Anatha capensis
Effea tetragonis
A citron with leaves like a bat's tail
A purple vine shaped like the middle finger of the right hand 20210722. The green leaves on the potted plants lining the way
The trap-door mirror repeating the last rites
The washable satin dressing gown under her blouse
The restored ornaments to be used again next time
She lies down by her bedside table, taking a bath every morning before starting a bottle of milk
She opens her door slowly so as not to block off the hallway with her curtains
She stands in front of the flat, takes a seat at the counter, and waits for you to come in
She opens the window, and sends the letter out into the world 20210722. Under the black umbrella, a green chair and the other bits and pieces, all in their proper places: next to the sea, the sky, and the earth. This outdoor home made of plastic, with no fixed position except the point of view it created, gave off an impression of a scene out of the ordinary, of a barbarous walk-around, a sacrifice made to creation, and of an ineradicable, plastic gloom. 20210728. Through the long straightaway in the living room and the large windows at the back, I would come to a state of mind sometimes like this: I am in a hurry!
But I am not in a hurry. I want to do three things today:
Go to the cinema.
Read an entire newspaper.
Open the curtains at the back of the room.
These steps will take time to be effective, but once they are complete, they will have a measurable effect on the way things are done in my home, in my life, and in the world around me. 20210818. Above a black couch covered in pillows, a picture on the wall shows a world of immense grandiosity, in which everything is relative: the movement of a marble floor, the creaking of a typewriter, the hanging of a label, the falling of an illustration, the open-work of a manuscript.
In such stories, the subject is almost always the same: a man who knows he is going blind comes across a picture which he believes to be true, and wonders whether the person seen is really his father or his twin brother. 20210801. From the brown leather chair, we see past a number of potted plants, through the white-framed window, and into a great park, in the middle of which a statue has been toppled over, and another, even more curious statue lies half buried in a heap of rocks.
Through the other window, to the left, we can see more fantastical objects, objects with names we do not know. 20210803. The living room is filled with many-colored objects, potted plants, and various objects from around the world which animate the room: a Dutch Colonial checkered carpet, antique rings displayed on crystal blocks, large Chinese screens, tapestry cartoons which provoke the most indulgent mood, and most enchanting of all, a living doll, made of a dozen or more perfectly spherical glass orbs, which opens its eyes to the most distant place. In one hand it holds a blindfold, and in the other, a tarantula. 20210904. Aside from a wooden table and two chairs, the room is completely empty. The walls are bare. I have seen no one in the whole time I have spent in this solitary room. I have almost no friends. I have almost no acquaintances. I have had four months to get used to this empty room, to sink into it everything I had, what I wanted, what I would lose, which is why I am writing this letter.
I know you will read this letter nonetheless, without a shred of sympathy or curiosity. For me, it is simply an attempt to adapt. 20210814. Above the bed, a picture on the wall shows all the colors of the sky: gold, blue, purple.
The grey haze, the spotless whiteness, its unending luminosity. 20210808. Above the bed, the four pictures on the wall show the four sisters:
Ella, pointlessly petrified by the sun.
Peggi, who mimicked more or less successfully the sound of a rhinoceros.
Viola, a helpless little ballerina.
And Olivia, who looked like a princess. She is wearing a grey cloak and a lace ruff dress with stripes, and she is posing in front of some brass plates engraved with messages about the goddess Europa. 20210902. A piece of cake lies on a large silver platter, eaten with a cup of rosewater. Beside the rear wall, in the window, is the body of a woman who just had her last meal. Her head is almost completely submerged in a pillow, her left arm can be seen hanging limp, her right arm is at the end of a plaited rope, her stomach is half-open, her skin is almost entirely hidden by a black hood which falls over her head like a cloak. 20210811. Black speakers, television screens, a keyboard, guitars, vocal instruments, etc. It would all be useless, since the aim of such an enterprise would always be to reach beyond the narrow horizon of the contemporary to something transcendent, to an image, a sensation, a beat, a line, and consonant clusters of intermittent and variable brilliance which seemed to come from everywhere, emanating from everywhere, diffusing from everywhere. 20210827. The couches in the living room are covered in brightly colored spheres, and the walls are coated in a rainbow of patterns, of colors, of textures. The furniture, objects, and decorations are not meant to disguise, or to mislead: they are meant to provide a starting place, a place from which the unfolding of the narrative will emerge complete, and from which the rendering of the picture will leave no room for guesswork or departure. 20210912. The bed and the small dinner table are now in place. The walls are bare, painted matte white. On the bedspread, embroidered with flowers, a woman lies peacefully with her arms folded and her eyes shut.
The woman is now holding a letter in her right hand. At the bottom of the page, her penmanship is almost complete:
This is the letter
You have so greatly loved
It was intended for me
When I do write
Along similar lines
I hope you find this as touching as I have been at the start
Thoughts and actions speak louder than words: I also want to say
I am at the end of my strength
I have almost nothing left 20210828. A kitchen with a brown hardwood floor, white cabinets, and a large refrigerator. Towels, shelves, and a wicker basket full of fruits and vegetables. A plate, a soup pot, and a saucer in which to place the golden spoon. Finally, on wire racks, rows upon rows of wine, meant to be drunk young. 20210811. A picture of a man on the wall with a background of deep ochre yellow. Below, furniture, a variety of objects, some household items, some accessories.
But back to the picture. It is not a thing which can easily be distinguished from everything surrounding it, and moreover something which cannot simply be reduced to an image, even if an image is possible.
It is like looking at a map of the world, without a continent to be found. 20210817. Below the pictures on the wall, two bottles of whisky stand in front of a mirror. On the bottle, notes are written:
Evaluation of the situation
Enumeration of things and beings lost on the way
Sort of summing up
Dinner turns into a disaster
A toast to the harbor captain who used to patrol the seashore
To the Spanish speaker saying the anthem
To the priest who gives a dram to the man, knuckles turned white
To someone calling for the shutter to be pulled 20210818. In front of the red wall, books are stacked floor to ceiling. Their volumes include well-known authors whose works have gone undiscovered for decades. Those who spurned publishers who didn’t want their work to go out of fashion. Writers who wrote not for living, but for art.
There are no paintings on the walls, because the walls and partitions are themselves the decor: they have been hung with painted wallpaper, providing a severe purple light which frightens the non-users out of their wits. 20210819. Beyond the black and white fireplace, the windows opened to the city streets below. Above the mantle, an image shows those characters familiar to the viewer:
The bartenders, their faces stern.
The customers, their voices quivering.
The critics, their mouths half open.
The band members, their arms outstretched.
The managers, their faces red with anger.
The directors, inventing ridiculous scenarios.
The newly-weds taking credit over their lovers.
The young lady living in the Ardennes with a Belgian builder 20210822. A black framed picture on the wall shows a private viewing of a vast, open-planned exhibition hall. In the foreground, the doors of the lobby open. We find we are prone to tears over the following motto:
If you want to live in a beautiful city
First you must be a man of strength
And lastly you must be a king of sorts
From now on you shall have my servant
I will give you a hand in your kingdom
Your highness, I mean to act on your behalf
As long as you are still alive 20210922. The doors of the large black cabinet are flung wide open. Several objects, once unseen, now become apparent: the pallet grills in which the works of art are installed, the ironical juxtaposition of their sharp angles, the simple yet majestic cube which serves as a bench, and the ricochet of a dagger which cuts your throat over and over again. 20211017. A brown wooden table sits in the front of the room. Behind it, a picture on the wall, entitled The Scent of Your Skin, depicts a young woman lying at full length on a marble mantelpiece, wearing a white lace ruff, her hair pulled back, in a green nightdress held over her left shoulder in a manner reminiscent of the ancient Greeks. At her side, an oblong mirror with a human skull placed in it. 20211030. At the center of the large white room, a television set equipped with everything a modern man or woman would have wanted – an always-on, always-invisible set top, always displaying the latest newshounds, always lit up, on all fours, singing the latest hits, taking part in spontaneous exclamations, and – in a toast – having their picture taken without even asking for a glass of water! 20211022. In the top floor of the wooden house, there is a large bedroom. Every corner is filled with books, pamphlets, cheap novelty items, and knickknacks. In the middle of this squalid nest, a little voice is heard laughing out loud:
Evaluation of the situation.
Enumeration of things and beings lost on the way.
Sort of summing up.
Warnings and announcements.
Inventory of all the stuff found in the boot.
Lost album cases smashed.
Exhibitions and displays.
The exhibition in the room on the top floor. 20211119. The large room.
The plant by the window.
The pictures on the desk.
The empty back wall.
The door.
The only person left in the room is the girl, her head covered in a printed cotton scarf, who is standing in front of the window, taking photographs.
Nobody has entered the room.
Nobody has looked at her.
Nobody has noticed she is there.
Nobody has seemed to move her.
Nobody has raised her head from the book she is reading.
Nobody has seemed to watch her for a heartbeat.
Nobody has ever told her anything at all. 20211109. The mirror hanging on the wall is surrounded by lights of various sizes and intensities. As night begins to fall, they flicker, illuminating the door that everyone in the building must pass by on their way up to the master bedroom. As soon as they pass through, the lights begin to dim, marking the passage of time.
The noise of the room is muted: the furniture is equally inert: the walls are empty, the floor is smooth, the ceiling is flat. Theatrical, psychological, aristocratic illusions. 20211107. Red flowers in a glass vase.
Fix an easy dessert at the dinner table.
Stay on at home and never go out.
Because you are too busy.
In fact, you are probably too busy.
You probably stayed at this table all afternoon.
You should leave at three.
Or else you will miss the train.
That evening.
Your wife was putting some pieces of the puzzle together.
Also wanting to do you a favor by giving you dinner.
But all the while, you were supposed to be watching over this austere and neutral space with keen interest. 20211020. Large gold building.
Large gold chandelier.
Antiques: white porcelain.
A Violinist performing Sonata No. 25 in D major.
String theory.
At the entrance to the rectory there is a large round table on which three layers of dried fruit have been placed: the first one being eaten away by the pigeons, the second one through by the rats, and the third one through by the wrens. 20211107. A black and white kitchen requires an insuperable technical feat of imagination, and in describing it she will have to be referring not to the whole operation, but to a particular feature. In using an espresso machine properly, she has unwittingly created a domestic vortex, bringing about the circulation of coffee throughout the whole building. Using an espresso machine without a proper ground detaches coffee grounds in the ordinary course of everyday life, and, as a result, the bedroom is turning into an espresso bar.
It is the twenty-third of June, nineteen seventy-five, and it will soon be eight o’clock in the evening. 20211127. In the bedroom, three pictures on the wall.
The first is a portrait of a clownish man, the second is an erotic engraving entitled The Peculiar Institution, the third is a woodblock print: a portrait of a woman sleeping.
She is cradled in a pink plasticized wool scarf around her neck, her hair in mass around her mouth, and her eyes half open. She is posing very still and strange, so that her right wrist is bent at an almost brutal angle, and her left elbow is turned to the front.
Young woman, how can I help you? 20211028. Tile floor.
Brown chair.
Large glass door.
No one answered the bell.
It was a small coastal town whose sudden dawn had shifted into a dead silence, a silencing made all the more poignant by the bell.
The disappearance of eye contact and of conversation – which is always the case in these situations – had seeped into the lives of townspeople. And it seemed as though they had inherited everything about their own history and present personas: neither charming nor interesting. 20211105. Beyond the living room, the large windows opened upon a scattering of trees, a kind of hedging in the undergrowth, or a road.
Ahead, a little to the right, a cyclist pedaling downhill, holding his chain in his hand, with his foot dragging in the middle of the road. Shortly, he turns left onto a wide stretch of grass lined with poplars, toward the only human habitation he knew. A little village, a few acres away from an oil-mill, with a grazing cow, a little creek, and a low house with a sign, alluding to the direction where he grew up. 20211026. A large window opened above him - city life was conducted by efficient, manly men, with a touch of Eastern magic and a taste for controversy. He would be drawn inexorably into tangents that sounded original and which he would have rather avoided, and which the listeners, without failing to grasp the underlying patterns embedded in the overall scenario, would instantly identify and joyously slit away. 20211205. A black and white cat appears several times throughout the text, each time on a different page. Readers who pay close attention will soon spot the patterns. Each of these arrangements of text has a destabilizing effect on the other. When converted into a speech or a picture, a blank page on a newspaper sometimes does more than just that: it shapes the reader’s mind and, as a consequence, his behavior. A blank page will interest a person who reads only things he agrees with, or who agrees with other things; a distorted page will interest someone who reads only places he likes, or who is indifferent to reminders of the boats he used to booze around, the ones he didn’t fancy very much, the ones that went on forever. 20211127. The window with colorful curtains.
Stand on the street, bit by bit.
Around in a minute breath.
Cityscape, linoleum, desert sand.
Blow dry grass, pat down tender places.
Assessment of situation, fox guarding bottle.
Situation improve, need strengthening.
(Partly disappeared).
Carry on dismantling old stuff.
Points to be crossed, double crossing each other.
Singing birds, vultures, cobras.
Documentaries, radio dramas, black boxes. 20211028. The brown wooden table is set with small white plates and various utensils. While beyond the table, almost out of sight, stands an upright piano. The piano is not in tune, but you proceed to play it anyhow. It sounds like a high-pitched scream.
It screams, and tells you that when you die, it will be because you did not listen to it. 20210922. A black and white design on the wall helps you identify twelve possibilities:
A reenactment of old films.
A rectangular piece of cardboard.
A manuscript in a bound volume.
A poison pen in a bottle.
A clean table with a refined finish.
A leather bench.
An issue of the avant-garde review.
Two lamp posts, one on each wall.
The clear glass ocean.
The deep blue sky.
The snow is shadow.
The ground is firm. 20211017. The man sitting at the table speaks very slowly, with an unsteady voice.
The woman doesn’t like the way he speaks.
Several times she has called him Daddy, but he doesn’t like the way she talks about him.
Sometimes he bothers her, sometimes he doesn’t; sometimes she feels sorry for him, for his part, for the length of time it takes her to say – and she doesn’t mean to say anything at all when spoken to. Often her confiding turns into pleading and despair: My father! My father! I hate you! I hate you! 20211125. A black cup of coffee.
He hadn’t drunk much.
Streaky feet.
Sore shoulders.
Arms and quivers with an untamed swagger.
Brown hair brushed up.
Sluggish mouth.
Relaxed posture.
Epic, splendid sight.
Empty hands, grasping pretty much everything. 20211123. The colorful pictures on the wall do not detract from the minimal furniture, but serve to complement each other. Images like these normally mean nothing and provide no additional information. But sometimes, as in this instance, they serve to magnify the point that has been originally emphasized and to crystallize the entire situation. They serve as accents, or rather perimeters: topic, time, place, number, animal, person, thing, encyclopedia, religion, man, woman, plant, jar, pencil, eraser, nail, brush, comb, hair, plane, ellipse, bushel, selenite, etc. 20211028. Above the potted plant, a shelf is lined with small glass bottles half-filled with rain water, summer thistle, and pharmaceutical products. Mangosteen, Japonicum, Pinus, Orlichum, and various exotic medicinals are displayed here. Aloe, pipa, guinea, maca, as well as certain weights and measures of multi-colored powders from the Americas: ambergris, corn, ash, bone, marble, cornelian, guaiac, and sepura alba. 20211022. On the old wooden table, a ring of wax candles illuminates the dark. The aromatic smoke we have just exhaled hangs heavy in the air, but when it finally reaches you, you dream upon the Holy Ghost. You curl up onto the cushions, rest several long seconds on your bony back, and imagine the huge abominations preparing you for the duel in which you would play the devil.
Our dreams and hallucinations are shaped in the fire of ambition which burns in our visionary cortex, bright, with a hot sulphuric smell. 20210925. In the small kitchen, the food is served on a low wooden table. Two large cups of coffee, black and strong, were brewed for me and my wife. My wife drinks them both in a single gulp, and shudders with joy when she sees her reflection in the mirror. I haven’t had enough time or coffee to process her story yet. I will return to it when I have more information to go on. Before leaving, I wanted to ask you one question.
What is the most amazing story you have ever heard? 20210924. Above the large black couch, the walls are completely bare. The wooden floor is also empty, revealing a most cursory collection of objects.
A wood cabinet.
A plant in a pot.
A bottle of wine.
A top hat, a decorated vase, a lamppost, and a serpent.
On the coffee table sits a single notebook, opened to the latest entry, which is written in Gothic lettering like this:
Please do not attempt to wake me if you do not succeed in seeing the devil.
I am in your hands.
I have nothing to hide.
I see the dark side of your face.
Your charming smile hides nothing. 20211007. The room with the large bright windows looks lovely from the inside, but one can easily see a person peering in from the outside. They are looking through the glass pane, directly at the framed picture on the wall. When illuminated, this image is imbued with life, giving off a radiant brilliancy.
Holding a magnifying glass, they continue to stare from outside the window. Their arm is extended in a perfect circle, their head is tilted towards you, their eyes are moist with emotion.
Green trees in the background.
There are no humans, birds, or insects to be seen.
It was here, in this empty scene, that the fairy tale began.
A story about a mysterious phenomenon, which had baffled scientists for centuries. People had reported seeing fire, sparks, and massive lightning strikes along the entire length of the horizon, but nobody had ever seen anything like it. Nobody. Nobody had ever attempted to find out. There was no written or oral tradition about this mysterious phenomenon that brought life to this point on earth. 20210701. Beyond the large window, the forest, the sky, and everything in-between, there was of course that solitary and disturbed silence which falls so often upon us all, and the feeling, the sight, and the smell of spring leaves.
It is this in-between in which the life of a person might be best described, and of which the lives of others were only meant to serve as a symbol, a parable, a story, a mockery, or a farce adapted by the other.
The life of a person who had nothing apart from this, who spent their days dreaming of nothing, dreaming of nothing more than to be a faceless thing, to be a thing indifferent to the things around them, to the little noises they would make to themself, to the little details they would leave to others, the little gestures they would make to show others they loved them.
All those long years spent sitting in silence, feeling the tiny little touches of their hand on their own body, of their fingertips on their own skin, of their long, thin lips in an un-uttered voice. 20210701. A man in the window
Looks out the corner of his eye
And tells jokes through a microphone
In a whisper
About the boys in school
With redneck looks
And the devil’s dice
Who laughs out loud when he wins
And this is what the French say
When they win
Voir le maître que je suis
See the master that I am 20210701. A photo of a white sheep.
Just to the side of the picture frame, a shepherdess holds a sheepdog in her arms. Its paws are stretched out, with its chin resting on her right shoulder.
In total, this is a mysterious pastoral scene: a rectangular enclosure surrounded by fences and marked by an x, as in a German Expressionist film.
What does a shepherdess need but a sheepdog? 20210701. Three bookshelves are filled from floor to ceiling.
The first is lined with old textbooks, defunct remedies, obsolete tricks, and discarded tales.
The second contains aberrations in herbal medicine, and the theories of abiogenesis, embryogenesis, and descent from parents suggesting that they might have been produced by chance alone.
The third doesn’t contain books, but rather papers, of the physical and of the literary kind, on which the future history of the arts and conflict may be built. Here we register histories of the war, the development of photography, the accounts of world events, local customs, notions of right and wrong, aesthetic conceptions of the past, imaginary connections drawn by missionaries, encyclopaedists, and philosophers, the histories and biographies of generals who marched on the front-lines of the battle for the allied cause, of generals who built up their empires, and of generals who sent their only sons into battle. 20210701. A white sheet of a person’s memory is lifted to reveal a constellation of stories underneath.
Biographical Sketches: of a girl with her braids, her bows, her gloves, her nightgown, her scarf, and her shawl.
Environmental Sketches: of a river, of an amphitheater, of a farm, of a city, of a road, of a flag, of a plane, of a cactus, of an ocean, of a beach.
The Origin of Species: a subjective, psychological, and sociological study of the origins of species.
The Prodigal Son: a tale of youthful idealism, with a humorous first part, and a tragic ending, fittingly, considering the author's notorious fondness for irony. 20210701. A bicycle under the metal railing of the stairs belongs to the building’s manager, who has kept it for his own use primarily, and secondarily for lending to friends who stop by and live in the building for a while.
The building manager is a quiet man who keeps to himself, but occasionally amuses the building’s residents with arithmetical puzzles and logic problems, posted on a small board at the bottom of the stairs.
Word-chain puzzles:
HIM LOVE ONE
HER HAVE ORE
ALL HATE ALE
Anagrams:
STREET = TESTER
ATHENS = HASTEN
ABSOLUTE = OUSTABLE 20210701. Behind two empty chairs, a big cabinet, not very neat, contains books of which the owner is keen to remain very much in control of. Not just the pages, but the entire volumes.
The books have always been a blurry, unreliable, and sometimes even inexplicable catalog of everything produced or consumed by him in his ever more inextricable spatio-linguistic grip. 20210701. The white flowers, a jute sack, and a quilted spread are on the bed. The floor covered in a carpet of woolen masses.
All around the place, the floor has shifted, become more fertile, and various objects have taken on life of their own.
The only thing that seems to have remained constant is the circular opening of the solitary window.
Sometimes the light comes in from the window, at other times through the tiny cracks in the wall. 20210705. A wooden mask belonging to a character in a long-forgotten drama.
Forgotten speech-patterns: accents, intonations, pauses, foot-prints. Italian, Spanish, Arabic, and Portuguese, the Portuguese being the most numerous, and the Arabic and Spanish the least so far as we know.
We can deduce from the general appearance of the room that the party was lavish, perhaps even grandiose, and that it did not leave anyone unsatisfied: everyone, in his or her turn, had something to gain and something to lose.
The question was, how to best allocate these gifts? 20210712. The large arched windows of the brick building are shields from the sun that give the impression of a spacious place, separated from the bustle of the city by a thin curtain. But the walls are almost completely covered in paintings, engravings, and miscellaneous reproductions, evidencing the intensity of his religious passion for the natural world. Standing on the marble flagstones, he would paint with his brush the fragments of a cliff face, or of a tree, or of a human being’s head, as if he were trying to reconstruct the scene from every angle. 20210703. The white lines on the wall are confined to a single point, and the only variation comes from the angle of the floor. Naturally, this gives the illusion of a seamless space, but in fact the walls are carefully constructed, and the variation in the floor makes a more or less conspicuous difference. At the very extreme, the floor almost completely encloses the entire space around it, and, on the other side, a small but barely perceptible bump is made at the junction of the wall and the floor, like the missing piece of an endless jigsaw puzzle. 20210710. The three pictures on the wall mean very different things to different people. A photograph might convey a feeling of profound sadness, or even exhilaration. For example, when you first see it, you may jump to the conclusion that it must be the last picture ever taken by man. A photograph, then, is not just any old picture, but a process through which, over and over, the reconstruction of a single, identical image presents itself to the mind in such a way as to form a narrative. A photograph thus constructed constitutes a lie, and the deception is apparent from the start: the deception is expressed in the perceived image, the object, the time, and the space. It is these three elements that compose the pictures on the wall: the object, the time, and the space. 20210714. Beyond the metal railing, a mirror on the wall reflects the light of my own eyes, my own thoughts, my own actions. How could I live without feeling my soul perish, how could I deal with the demands of the moment by plunging into the married life! At the end of an exhilarating search, I had my savages, I asked for nothing more than to be one of them, to share their days, their pains, their rituals. Alas! they didn’t deserve my adoration: my prayers were unanswered, my faith was shaken, my treasure was uncommitted. I began to live out my days in the country, in search of an occasion when I would be able to perform the miracle I had vowed to give them. Unfortunately, the moment came, and it was equally as disappointing: I fell into a mine, and died trying to get to the other side. 20210716. A red chair, a large couch, and a green tree with ornamental branches occupied the living room. The wooden floors were covered by short-haired carpet, and beneath the surface, a domestic tranquility reigned in this flat that the lady with the little dog lived in until 1965. None of the apartments had been renovated since then. 20210704. The wooden table above the red floor isn’t in fact a table at all. It is instead a platform on which a chair has been positioned in such a way as to make an almost vertical rise from the floor. The words and the numbers on the wooden board are not visible, but the effect is purely and simply to make the body of the table disappear, to make the space correspond to the sound of the words and the numbers, so that the contact of the viewer with the floor, and the subsequent return to the center, is purely a physiological phenomenon. 20210717. Above the couch, a framed painting has arisen. It portrays a small seaside square: two boys are sitting on the harbor wall playing dice. On the steps of a monument, a man is reading a newspaper in the shadow of a sword-wielding hero. A girl is filling her tub at the fountain. A fruit-seller is lying beside his scales. Through the empty window and door openings of a tavern, two men can be seen drinking their wine in the depths. 20210715. A light is hanging from the ceiling, illuminating a row of green plants. From left to right the plants take the following forms:
The violet bougainvillea
An oleander
Anatha capensis
Effea tetragonis
A citron with leaves like a bat's tail
A purple vine shaped like the middle finger of the right hand 20210722. The green leaves on the potted plants lining the way
The trap-door mirror repeating the last rites
The washable satin dressing gown under her blouse
The restored ornaments to be used again next time
She lies down by her bedside table, taking a bath every morning before starting a bottle of milk
She opens her door slowly so as not to block off the hallway with her curtains
She stands in front of the flat, takes a seat at the counter, and waits for you to come in
She opens the window, and sends the letter out into the world 20210722. Under the black umbrella, a green chair and the other bits and pieces, all in their proper places: next to the sea, the sky, and the earth. This outdoor home made of plastic, with no fixed position except the point of view it created, gave off an impression of a scene out of the ordinary, of a barbarous walk-around, a sacrifice made to creation, and of an ineradicable, plastic gloom. 20210728. Through the long straightaway in the living room and the large windows at the back, I would come to a state of mind sometimes like this: I am in a hurry!
But I am not in a hurry. I want to do three things today:
Go to the cinema.
Read an entire newspaper.
Open the curtains at the back of the room.
These steps will take time to be effective, but once they are complete, they will have a measurable effect on the way things are done in my home, in my life, and in the world around me. 20210818. Above a black couch covered in pillows, a picture on the wall shows a world of immense grandiosity, in which everything is relative: the movement of a marble floor, the creaking of a typewriter, the hanging of a label, the falling of an illustration, the open-work of a manuscript.
In such stories, the subject is almost always the same: a man who knows he is going blind comes across a picture which he believes to be true, and wonders whether the person seen is really his father or his twin brother. 20210801. From the brown leather chair, we see past a number of potted plants, through the white-framed window, and into a great park, in the middle of which a statue has been toppled over, and another, even more curious statue lies half buried in a heap of rocks.
Through the other window, to the left, we can see more fantastical objects, objects with names we do not know. 20210803. The living room is filled with many-colored objects, potted plants, and various objects from around the world which animate the room: a Dutch Colonial checkered carpet, antique rings displayed on crystal blocks, large Chinese screens, tapestry cartoons which provoke the most indulgent mood, and most enchanting of all, a living doll, made of a dozen or more perfectly spherical glass orbs, which opens its eyes to the most distant place. In one hand it holds a blindfold, and in the other, a tarantula. 20210904. Aside from a wooden table and two chairs, the room is completely empty. The walls are bare. I have seen no one in the whole time I have spent in this solitary room. I have almost no friends. I have almost no acquaintances. I have had four months to get used to this empty room, to sink into it everything I had, what I wanted, what I would lose, which is why I am writing this letter.
I know you will read this letter nonetheless, without a shred of sympathy or curiosity. For me, it is simply an attempt to adapt. 20210814. Above the bed, a picture on the wall shows all the colors of the sky: gold, blue, purple.
The grey haze, the spotless whiteness, its unending luminosity. 20210808. Above the bed, the four pictures on the wall show the four sisters:
Ella, pointlessly petrified by the sun.
Peggi, who mimicked more or less successfully the sound of a rhinoceros.
Viola, a helpless little ballerina.
And Olivia, who looked like a princess. She is wearing a grey cloak and a lace ruff dress with stripes, and she is posing in front of some brass plates engraved with messages about the goddess Europa. 20210902. A piece of cake lies on a large silver platter, eaten with a cup of rosewater. Beside the rear wall, in the window, is the body of a woman who just had her last meal. Her head is almost completely submerged in a pillow, her left arm can be seen hanging limp, her right arm is at the end of a plaited rope, her stomach is half-open, her skin is almost entirely hidden by a black hood which falls over her head like a cloak. 20210811. Black speakers, television screens, a keyboard, guitars, vocal instruments, etc. It would all be useless, since the aim of such an enterprise would always be to reach beyond the narrow horizon of the contemporary to something transcendent, to an image, a sensation, a beat, a line, and consonant clusters of intermittent and variable brilliance which seemed to come from everywhere, emanating from everywhere, diffusing from everywhere. 20210827. The couches in the living room are covered in brightly colored spheres, and the walls are coated in a rainbow of patterns, of colors, of textures. The furniture, objects, and decorations are not meant to disguise, or to mislead: they are meant to provide a starting place, a place from which the unfolding of the narrative will emerge complete, and from which the rendering of the picture will leave no room for guesswork or departure. 20210912. The bed and the small dinner table are now in place. The walls are bare, painted matte white. On the bedspread, embroidered with flowers, a woman lies peacefully with her arms folded and her eyes shut.
The woman is now holding a letter in her right hand. At the bottom of the page, her penmanship is almost complete:
This is the letter
You have so greatly loved
It was intended for me
When I do write
Along similar lines
I hope you find this as touching as I have been at the start
Thoughts and actions speak louder than words: I also want to say
I am at the end of my strength
I have almost nothing left 20210828. A kitchen with a brown hardwood floor, white cabinets, and a large refrigerator. Towels, shelves, and a wicker basket full of fruits and vegetables. A plate, a soup pot, and a saucer in which to place the golden spoon. Finally, on wire racks, rows upon rows of wine, meant to be drunk young. 20210811. A picture of a man on the wall with a background of deep ochre yellow. Below, furniture, a variety of objects, some household items, some accessories.
But back to the picture. It is not a thing which can easily be distinguished from everything surrounding it, and moreover something which cannot simply be reduced to an image, even if an image is possible.
It is like looking at a map of the world, without a continent to be found. 20210817. Below the pictures on the wall, two bottles of whisky stand in front of a mirror. On the bottle, notes are written:
Evaluation of the situation
Enumeration of things and beings lost on the way
Sort of summing up
Dinner turns into a disaster
A toast to the harbor captain who used to patrol the seashore
To the Spanish speaker saying the anthem
To the priest who gives a dram to the man, knuckles turned white
To someone calling for the shutter to be pulled 20210818. In front of the red wall, books are stacked floor to ceiling. Their volumes include well-known authors whose works have gone undiscovered for decades. Those who spurned publishers who didn’t want their work to go out of fashion. Writers who wrote not for living, but for art.
There are no paintings on the walls, because the walls and partitions are themselves the decor: they have been hung with painted wallpaper, providing a severe purple light which frightens the non-users out of their wits. 20210819. Beyond the black and white fireplace, the windows opened to the city streets below. Above the mantle, an image shows those characters familiar to the viewer:
The bartenders, their faces stern.
The customers, their voices quivering.
The critics, their mouths half open.
The band members, their arms outstretched.
The managers, their faces red with anger.
The directors, inventing ridiculous scenarios.
The newly-weds taking credit over their lovers.
The young lady living in the Ardennes with a Belgian builder 20210822. A black framed picture on the wall shows a private viewing of a vast, open-planned exhibition hall. In the foreground, the doors of the lobby open. We find we are prone to tears over the following motto:
If you want to live in a beautiful city
First you must be a man of strength
And lastly you must be a king of sorts
From now on you shall have my servant
I will give you a hand in your kingdom
Your highness, I mean to act on your behalf
As long as you are still alive 20210922. The doors of the large black cabinet are flung wide open. Several objects, once unseen, now become apparent: the pallet grills in which the works of art are installed, the ironical juxtaposition of their sharp angles, the simple yet majestic cube which serves as a bench, and the ricochet of a dagger which cuts your throat over and over again. 20211017. A brown wooden table sits in the front of the room. Behind it, a picture on the wall, entitled The Scent of Your Skin, depicts a young woman lying at full length on a marble mantelpiece, wearing a white lace ruff, her hair pulled back, in a green nightdress held over her left shoulder in a manner reminiscent of the ancient Greeks. At her side, an oblong mirror with a human skull placed in it. 20211030. At the center of the large white room, a television set equipped with everything a modern man or woman would have wanted – an always-on, always-invisible set top, always displaying the latest newshounds, always lit up, on all fours, singing the latest hits, taking part in spontaneous exclamations, and – in a toast – having their picture taken without even asking for a glass of water! 20211022. In the top floor of the wooden house, there is a large bedroom. Every corner is filled with books, pamphlets, cheap novelty items, and knickknacks. In the middle of this squalid nest, a little voice is heard laughing out loud:
Evaluation of the situation.
Enumeration of things and beings lost on the way.
Sort of summing up.
Warnings and announcements.
Inventory of all the stuff found in the boot.
Lost album cases smashed.
Exhibitions and displays.
The exhibition in the room on the top floor. 20211119. The large room.
The plant by the window.
The pictures on the desk.
The empty back wall.
The door.
The only person left in the room is the girl, her head covered in a printed cotton scarf, who is standing in front of the window, taking photographs.
Nobody has entered the room.
Nobody has looked at her.
Nobody has noticed she is there.
Nobody has seemed to move her.
Nobody has raised her head from the book she is reading.
Nobody has seemed to watch her for a heartbeat.
Nobody has ever told her anything at all. 20211109. The mirror hanging on the wall is surrounded by lights of various sizes and intensities. As night begins to fall, they flicker, illuminating the door that everyone in the building must pass by on their way up to the master bedroom. As soon as they pass through, the lights begin to dim, marking the passage of time.
The noise of the room is muted: the furniture is equally inert: the walls are empty, the floor is smooth, the ceiling is flat. Theatrical, psychological, aristocratic illusions. 20211107. Red flowers in a glass vase.
Fix an easy dessert at the dinner table.
Stay on at home and never go out.
Because you are too busy.
In fact, you are probably too busy.
You probably stayed at this table all afternoon.
You should leave at three.
Or else you will miss the train.
That evening.
Your wife was putting some pieces of the puzzle together.
Also wanting to do you a favor by giving you dinner.
But all the while, you were supposed to be watching over this austere and neutral space with keen interest. 20211020. Large gold building.
Large gold chandelier.
Antiques: white porcelain.
A Violinist performing Sonata No. 25 in D major.
String theory.
At the entrance to the rectory there is a large round table on which three layers of dried fruit have been placed: the first one being eaten away by the pigeons, the second one through by the rats, and the third one through by the wrens. 20211107. A black and white kitchen requires an insuperable technical feat of imagination, and in describing it she will have to be referring not to the whole operation, but to a particular feature. In using an espresso machine properly, she has unwittingly created a domestic vortex, bringing about the circulation of coffee throughout the whole building. Using an espresso machine without a proper ground detaches coffee grounds in the ordinary course of everyday life, and, as a result, the bedroom is turning into an espresso bar.
It is the twenty-third of June, nineteen seventy-five, and it will soon be eight o’clock in the evening. 20211127. In the bedroom, three pictures on the wall.
The first is a portrait of a clownish man, the second is an erotic engraving entitled The Peculiar Institution, the third is a woodblock print: a portrait of a woman sleeping.
She is cradled in a pink plasticized wool scarf around her neck, her hair in mass around her mouth, and her eyes half open. She is posing very still and strange, so that her right wrist is bent at an almost brutal angle, and her left elbow is turned to the front.
Young woman, how can I help you? 20211028. Tile floor.
Brown chair.
Large glass door.
No one answered the bell.
It was a small coastal town whose sudden dawn had shifted into a dead silence, a silencing made all the more poignant by the bell.
The disappearance of eye contact and of conversation – which is always the case in these situations – had seeped into the lives of townspeople. And it seemed as though they had inherited everything about their own history and present personas: neither charming nor interesting. 20211105. Beyond the living room, the large windows opened upon a scattering of trees, a kind of hedging in the undergrowth, or a road.
Ahead, a little to the right, a cyclist pedaling downhill, holding his chain in his hand, with his foot dragging in the middle of the road. Shortly, he turns left onto a wide stretch of grass lined with poplars, toward the only human habitation he knew. A little village, a few acres away from an oil-mill, with a grazing cow, a little creek, and a low house with a sign, alluding to the direction where he grew up. 20211026. A large window opened above him - city life was conducted by efficient, manly men, with a touch of Eastern magic and a taste for controversy. He would be drawn inexorably into tangents that sounded original and which he would have rather avoided, and which the listeners, without failing to grasp the underlying patterns embedded in the overall scenario, would instantly identify and joyously slit away. 20211205. A black and white cat appears several times throughout the text, each time on a different page. Readers who pay close attention will soon spot the patterns. Each of these arrangements of text has a destabilizing effect on the other. When converted into a speech or a picture, a blank page on a newspaper sometimes does more than just that: it shapes the reader’s mind and, as a consequence, his behavior. A blank page will interest a person who reads only things he agrees with, or who agrees with other things; a distorted page will interest someone who reads only places he likes, or who is indifferent to reminders of the boats he used to booze around, the ones he didn’t fancy very much, the ones that went on forever. 20211127. The window with colorful curtains.
Stand on the street, bit by bit.
Around in a minute breath.
Cityscape, linoleum, desert sand.
Blow dry grass, pat down tender places.
Assessment of situation, fox guarding bottle.
Situation improve, need strengthening.
(Partly disappeared).
Carry on dismantling old stuff.
Points to be crossed, double crossing each other.
Singing birds, vultures, cobras.
Documentaries, radio dramas, black boxes. 20211028. The brown wooden table is set with small white plates and various utensils. While beyond the table, almost out of sight, stands an upright piano. The piano is not in tune, but you proceed to play it anyhow. It sounds like a high-pitched scream.
It screams, and tells you that when you die, it will be because you did not listen to it. 20210922. A black and white design on the wall helps you identify twelve possibilities:
A reenactment of old films.
A rectangular piece of cardboard.
A manuscript in a bound volume.
A poison pen in a bottle.
A clean table with a refined finish.
A leather bench.
An issue of the avant-garde review.
Two lamp posts, one on each wall.
The clear glass ocean.
The deep blue sky.
The snow is shadow.
The ground is firm. 20211017. The man sitting at the table speaks very slowly, with an unsteady voice.
The woman doesn’t like the way he speaks.
Several times she has called him Daddy, but he doesn’t like the way she talks about him.
Sometimes he bothers her, sometimes he doesn’t; sometimes she feels sorry for him, for his part, for the length of time it takes her to say – and she doesn’t mean to say anything at all when spoken to. Often her confiding turns into pleading and despair: My father! My father! I hate you! I hate you! 20211125. A black cup of coffee.
He hadn’t drunk much.
Streaky feet.
Sore shoulders.
Arms and quivers with an untamed swagger.
Brown hair brushed up.
Sluggish mouth.
Relaxed posture.
Epic, splendid sight.
Empty hands, grasping pretty much everything. 20211123. The colorful pictures on the wall do not detract from the minimal furniture, but serve to complement each other. Images like these normally mean nothing and provide no additional information. But sometimes, as in this instance, they serve to magnify the point that has been originally emphasized and to crystallize the entire situation. They serve as accents, or rather perimeters: topic, time, place, number, animal, person, thing, encyclopedia, religion, man, woman, plant, jar, pencil, eraser, nail, brush, comb, hair, plane, ellipse, bushel, selenite, etc. 20211028. Above the potted plant, a shelf is lined with small glass bottles half-filled with rain water, summer thistle, and pharmaceutical products. Mangosteen, Japonicum, Pinus, Orlichum, and various exotic medicinals are displayed here. Aloe, pipa, guinea, maca, as well as certain weights and measures of multi-colored powders from the Americas: ambergris, corn, ash, bone, marble, cornelian, guaiac, and sepura alba. 20211022. On the old wooden table, a ring of wax candles illuminates the dark. The aromatic smoke we have just exhaled hangs heavy in the air, but when it finally reaches you, you dream upon the Holy Ghost. You curl up onto the cushions, rest several long seconds on your bony back, and imagine the huge abominations preparing you for the duel in which you would play the devil.
Our dreams and hallucinations are shaped in the fire of ambition which burns in our visionary cortex, bright, with a hot sulphuric smell. 20210925. In the small kitchen, the food is served on a low wooden table. Two large cups of coffee, black and strong, were brewed for me and my wife. My wife drinks them both in a single gulp, and shudders with joy when she sees her reflection in the mirror. I haven’t had enough time or coffee to process her story yet. I will return to it when I have more information to go on. Before leaving, I wanted to ask you one question.
What is the most amazing story you have ever heard? 20210924. Above the large black couch, the walls are completely bare. The wooden floor is also empty, revealing a most cursory collection of objects.
A wood cabinet.
A plant in a pot.
A bottle of wine.
A top hat, a decorated vase, a lamppost, and a serpent.
On the coffee table sits a single notebook, opened to the latest entry, which is written in Gothic lettering like this:
Please do not attempt to wake me if you do not succeed in seeing the devil.
I am in your hands.
I have nothing to hide.
I see the dark side of your face.
Your charming smile hides nothing. 20211007. The room with the large bright windows looks lovely from the inside, but one can easily see a person peering in from the outside. They are looking through the glass pane, directly at the framed picture on the wall. When illuminated, this image is imbued with life, giving off a radiant brilliancy.
Holding a magnifying glass, they continue to stare from outside the window. Their arm is extended in a perfect circle, their head is tilted towards you, their eyes are moist with emotion.