Stirrings Still

One night as he sat at his table head on hands he saw himself rise and go.

One night or day.

For when his own light went out he was not left in the dark.

Light of a kind came then from the one high window.

Under it still the stool on which till he could or would no more he used to mount to see the sky.

Why he did not crane out to see what lay beneath was perhaps because the window was not made to open or because he could or would not open it.

Perhaps he knew only too well what lay beneath and did not wish to see it again.

One night or day then as he sat at his table head on hands he saw himself rise and go.

First rise and stand clinging to the table.

Then sit again.

Then rise again and stand clinging to the table again.

Then go.

Start to go.

Seen always from behind whithersoever he went.

Same hat and coat as of old when he walked the roads.

The back roads.

Now as one in a strange place seeking the way out.

In the dark.

In a strange place blindly in the dark of night or day seeking the way out.

A way out.

To the roads.

The back roads.

There had been a time he would sometimes lift his head enough to see his hands.

What of them was to be seen.

One laid on the table and the other on the one.

At rest after all they did.

Lift his past head a moment to see his past hands.

Then lay it back on them to rest it too.

After all it did.

No matter how no matter where.

Time and grief and self so-called.

Oh all to end.

Samuel Beckett

Thomas the Obscure

“I think: there at the point where thought joins with me I am able to subtract myself from being, without diminishing, without changing, by means of a metamorphosis which saves me from myself, beyond any point of reference from which I might be seized.

It is the property of my thought, not to assure me of existence (as all things do, as a stone does), but to assure me of being in nothingness itself, and to invite me not to be, in order to make me feel my marvelous absence.

I think, said Thomas, and this visible, inexpressible, nonexistent Thomas I became meant that henceforth I was never there where I was, and there was not even anything mysterious about it.

My existence became entirely that of an absent person who,

in every act I performed,

produced the same act

and did not perform it.”

Maurice Blanchot

The Holy Terrors

“Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.”

“What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show. Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn.”

“One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.”

 

“A little too much is just enough for me.”

“At the circus, a careless mother may let her child take part in the experiments of a Chinese magician. He puts him in a box. He opens the box; it's empty. He closes it again. He opens it; the child reappears and goes back to his seat. Now it is no longer the same child. Nobody doubts it.”

Jean Cocteau

In My Secret Life

"I saw you this morning, you were moving so fast. 

Can't seem to loosen my grip 

On the past. 

And I miss you so much, there's no one in sight. 

And we're still making love

 In my secret life. 

I smile when I am angry, 

I cheat and I lie,

 I do what I have to do to get by, 

In my secret life.”

“And I'll dance with you in Vienna, 

I'll be wearing a river's disguise. 

The hyacinth wild on my shoulder my mouth on the dew of your thighs. 

And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moss. 

And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty, my cheap violin and my cross.”

“Don't call yourself a secret unless you mean to keep it.”

“-You know how to call me although such a noise now would only confuse the air 

Neither of us can forget the steps we danced the words you stretched to call me out of dust 

Yes I long for you not just as a leaf for weather or vase for hands but with a narrow human longing that makes a man refuse any fields but his own

I wait for you at an unexpected place in your journey like the rusted key or the feather you do not pick up.-..."

“Silence 

And a deeper silence 

When the crickets 

Hesitate”

Leonard Cohen