"May He who is perhaps dilate the heart of man to the measure of all life".
L’Oeuvre au noir (1968); Marguerite Yourcenar
There are moments when I feel sedentary. Moments with well-defined edges. These are often the ones that give rise to souvenir photos, images that can be shared...
Later on, I will look at them and project myself into them, in the same way as anyone else to whom these snapshots fall before their eyes. The reflection of an identifiable reality, like an identity card: faces, names, a beginning, an "expiration date".
Christmas with the family, a drink with the neighbours, an end-of-year party with colleagues, dinner with my best friends, a date, a work event.
You could say that in these moments I know where I am and therefore I know who I am. I find myself in an objective reality, at least objectively. As if I were safe, 'posed' as the young people say.
Maybe I wasn't even that present when I took the picture? Where was my heart, where did my thoughts travel? And my body: did I have a knot in my chest, vibrations that prevented me from anchoring myself, a trembling voice, stinging eyes or a scattered brain?
Was I really there, surrounded, as if tucked in, by my loved ones? Was my smile a sign of a calmed mind?
Later, one evening, alone in my room, I am transported by music. I leave behind the anxiety and frustration of insomnia and let myself be caught up in emotions that I see as truer than anything else. I redraw the intensity of my existence and, for sure, I feel at home. I feel in turn insignificant, alone, disconnected, free too, strong, full of love and appetite for life.
There will be no photograph to testify to these moments, to my reality on this solitary night, a reality with blurred contours, unexpected energy and floating abundance. The one that, even for me, when sleep comes, will soon be ineffable. I will already be elsewhere, in the mystery of the dream. Nevertheless, surely marked.
These permanent movements, from one state of mind to another, from one state of consciousness to another, are like waves. They rise and fall, come into being and die. I am the one who is born and dies, I come and go, I leave again and again. There is nothing fixed here. It is dizzying. An insecure lucidity in fact: to perceive oneself alive because I am leaving at every moment.
On the other hand, to feel seen, to be "taken" in a photo, here is a way to stop this crazy flow! Finally, it's square, describable; beautiful even, if the effort is put into it. Scrolling for hours to remember a reassuring reality, which, in fact, as I see it on the image, has never existed other than by fading away.
Then, from the picture, words can be used to further fix the "fragile moments".
It was so cool! She's getting on in years. We had a good talk with what's-his-name! Look at those two, they're a good pair. Do you remember how things went wrong that day? She's so beautiful!
Speech that freezes, that devitalizes? Because, in the end, if we wanted to be true to life, we would try to sustain the flow, not to stop anything with images or words? But would we be viable if we only communicated movement and transformation?
I love, with great admiration, some people who live, beyond one night, in a reality that makes me think of this movement of life. A reality in which social conventions, and sometimes language, have a different place. Indeed, what sense does it make to classify time in minutes, hours and days if everything moves, if "time passes"? I feel that my relative is trying to speak "my language" to get closer to me when he tells me about his arrivals and departures always to the minute: Claire, we left at 9:21 and arrived at the hotel at 13:56.
Why are objects definitively assigned to so-and-so, to one use and not another? What sense does possession make in a world of movement and transition, if not that of being a powerful antidote to the anguish of (being) lost? So I understand and I love it when I see my friend spontaneously dress in "my brother's coat", "my jumper", "my cousin's belt" and hand me "her dress", insisting "Claire, it's your Christmas outfit! And why not use a spread to garnish the vegetable soup? I discover that it's excellent. The books in the library get a new lease of life, laid out as presents under the tree. I get another perspective, that of a heart that expands a little.
I tell myself that for an expanded heart, it doesn't matter what's around it, because everything exists inside. I continue to imagine dichotomously: sorrows and joys, pains and strengths, light and darkness. More likely, there is no more outside and inside, no more territory, but just movement. Just all life.
May it please you...
Claire
