A Breath of Life Read Free Page B

fragments. I don’t want to give a false future to each flash of an instant. Everything happens exactly at the moment in which it’s being written or read. This passage here was actually written in relation to its basic form after I reread the book because as the book progressed I didn’t have a clear understanding as to which way to go. Yet, without giving greater logical explanations, I clung entirely to the fragmentary aspect in Angela as in myself.
    My life is made of fragments and that’s how it is with Angela. My own life has an actual plot. It would be the history of the bark of a tree and not of the tree. A bunch of facts that only the senses would explain. I see that, without meaning to, what I write and what Angela writes are passages that might be called random, though within a context of . . .
    That’s how the book occurs to me this time. And, since I respect what comes from me to myself, that’s exactly how I write.
    What is written here, mine or Angela’s, are the remains of a demolition of soul, they are lateral cuts of a reality that constantly escapes me. These fragments of book mean that I work in ruins.
    I know that this book isn’t easy, but it’s easy only for those who believe in the mystery. As I write it I do not know myself, I forget myself. The I who appears in this book is not I. It is not autobiographical, you all know nothing of me. I never have told you and never shall tell you who I am. I am all of yourselves. I took from this book only what I wanted — I left out my story and Angela’s. What matters to me are the snapshots of sensations — sensations that are thought and not the immobile pose of those waiting for me to say, “say cheese!” Because I’m no street photographer.
    I’ve already read this book through to the end and I’m adding to this beginning something for you to keep in mind. It’s that the end, which shouldn’t be read beforehand, comes back to the beginning in a circle, a snake swallowing its own tail. And, having read the book, I cut much more than half of it, I only left what provokes and inspires me for life: a star lit at dusk.
    Do not read what I write as a reader would do. Unless this reader works, he too, on the soliloquies of the irrational dark.
    If this book ever comes out, may the profane recoil from it. Since writing is something sacred where no infidel can enter. I am making a really bad book on purpose in order to drive off the profane who want to “like.” But a small group will see that this “liking” is superficial and will enter inside what I am truly writing, which is neither “bad” nor “good.”
    Inspiration is like a mysterious scent of amber. I have a small piece of amber with me. The scent makes me sister to the sacred orgies of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Blessed be your loves. Could it be that I am afraid to take the step of dying at this very instant? Careful not to die. Yet I am already in the future. This future of mine that shall be for you the past of someone dead. When you have finished this book cry a hallelujah for me. When you close the last page of this frustrated and dauntless and playful book of life then forget me. May God bless you then and this book ends well. That I might at last find respite. May peace be upon us, upon you, and upon me. Am I falling into discourse? may the temple’s faithful forgive me: I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.

The Daydream Is What Reality Is

ANGELA
    The last word will be the fourth dimension.
    Length: her speaking
    Width: beyond thought
    Depth: my speaking of her, of facts and feelings and of her beyond-thought.
    I must be legible almost in the dark.

I had a vivid and inexplicable dream: I dreamed I was playing with my reflection. But my reflection wasn’t in a mirror, but reflected somebody else who wasn’t me.
    Was it because of this dream that I invented Angela as my reflection? Everything is real but moves lei-sure-ly in slow