1986-07-01

A story:
In the Blue Light of Reality

A long road lay ahead. After the first step, she was seized by doubt and turned back to wait and see. Maybe later? Tomorrow was still a long way off. Today promised an endless expanse of time, from this standpoint at least – at one end of the dawn. The room was peaceful and warm. The heat of the night still lingered in the bed, still pleasurable. She lay down naked in all that whiteness to be enveloped by the previous darkness.

The night lacked the lucid vision of the day. A different form of clarity inhabited it. One in which fear no longer served to create a boundary. One in which constant transgressions led straight out into infinity. One in which the room no longer created a framework.

What a crazy idea it was! She laughed aloud lying there under the covers. Going off on a walk totally naked. Her body shook with all the tiny sounds that left her with the laughter and the darkness got hotter and hotter. The cotton fabric of the sheets covered her face. She breathed against the cloth with her mouth open. The moisture spread out in wet circles and she decided to remain there until those patches had dried.

The light forced its way in. It pushed through the crack in the curtains, across the floor – straight at her. It found its way in where her knee lifted the sheet over her bent legs. With a sudden movement she kicked the sheet off and trod it and the covers into a little pile at the foot of the bed. Breathless with ferocity she stretched and then let her feet rest on the still damp sheet. And then there was no longer anything left to hide her pale skin from the daylight.

It had been a winter of many nights. A great deal of darkness to feel your way through. Many nights when vision was transferred to all the cells of the body, when her eyes could rest before the acquisition of a totality, when her pulse could be perceived in every part. She was tired. Perhaps that is why indecision had such power over her? An hour had passed since the first step back and anxiety could now be clearly discerned in her movements. She started to get dressed. Her nakedness made her feel much too vulnerable in the white light. Slowly she took back what she had exposed when she opened out towards the day.

Dressed, her forebodings became more easily managed. Clothes served as a cocoon that underlined the separation and the limitations to listening. Once again reality would be confirmed with the seeing of the eyes. She sighed deeply inside the mask she had constructed for herself. How was she going to set off on to her path? Where would her walk begin?

She walked barefoot over to the bookshelf to look for a map. There were none. So she started to draw one on the floor. Using wax crayons, she transformed the surface into a labyrinth of lines of different colours. The spiral form that linked the centre to the beginning along a diagonal line recurred several times, creating the form of a twisted circle. When the room had no more space on the floor to offer, she climbed up on to the table so as to be able to survey the new landscape from above. She was confused by the multiplicity of routes. It seemed impossible to find any way out.

She jumped down from the table and put her shoes on.

The sun was hot. The colours melted on the floor and her shoes left footprints of each step. She shut her eyes and started to walk slowly across the floor. With her eyes closed she tried to find her way toward the door. She turned at the threshold. Climbed up onto the tallboy and reached down to open the door. Her walk had left clearly recognisable tracks in all the colours of the spectrum. From up there the world looked entirely different and, all of a sudden, the laughter was back. Deep and convulsive. It was three hours after the first step.

Somewhere else entirely a young man was trying to find his way. He stood at the edge of a sea. He was holding a large piece of glass in his hands, just above the surface of the water. The waves kept striking the bottom of the glass. On the upper side grains of sand had been strewn. The man stood there in the sun and let the wind blow paths in the sand. In that moment, time had no beginning and no end.

So as not to destroy the tracks, she climbed onto the furniture to try and find a more comfortable position. She huddled up with her desire in the armchair. The flesh of the apple was just as warm form the sunlight as the room itself when she took the first bite. Calm spread through her body as what had been an inkling of a possible direction for the walk became a certainty. She devoured the whole apple.

Dusk was approaching. Nine hours had passed since the first step back. Shadows thronged the corridors of the labyrinth. Everything was lovely. At the threshold she turned round one last time. Then she went out and down the stairs, leaving the fear behind. There was long road ahead of her.

A woman gets off a train to continue her journey over water. There is no sign of any boat. Currents and winds determine the time. There are those who say that the birds come first. So you have to fix your gaze on high and let it shift with the movement of the winds. In the space above.

The woman walks along the beach. Her shoes were left on the train, her suitcase on the platform. She reads the movement of damp sand through her bare feet. The waves approach her with their hot saltiness – luring her in. Without lowering her eyes, she meets the sea with her mind. There is no time for waiting. She leaves her clothes. Naked she starts swimming.

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