The black was what was and
it was here and there and only the blackness
and it was what was around me and no other was in
it. It was over me and
under me and above me and below me and to say what
it was, what the
blackness was, was impossible and there was nothing
else to say that it
was like this or like that. It is difficult to describe
that which was everything there was. There was nothing
to distinguish the here from the
there, nor the before from the after. I use the
word "black" but, to tell
the truth, it was not exactly black. It was not exactly
a color and it was
more than a color. In fact it was no color at all and
black is the usual
word to describe that condition of a certain sort of
emptiness. I looked up
and down and it was the same everywhere. I tried to listen
and of course
there was nothing, not even the smallest hum and the
lack of noise was also
this blackness and the peace that was what was was also
this blackness.
And it was comfortable and I was satisfied in it and
I did nothing.
I was in it and I stretched and felt my body going on
and on in every
direction and it seemed there was no limit to where I
began or where I ended.
I could not see my hands or my feet and of course I had
no use for them and
the blackness was smooth and quiet that engulfed
them and there was no end
to it.
It was a pleasant feeling.
But I do not know how long I was there. It was
not possible to tell. And then
I was thinking and I did not bother to think about
time. One thought led to
another and on endlessly and multiplying and to me
everything seemed incre-
dible and wonderful. I am fond of freshness and the
unique and everything
was original. What forms I envisaged! What ideas
I had!
What rare and elegant monsters genuflected through
my mind!
I remembered the simplicity of the blackness that
was and I wanted something
that too was simple and the simplicity severe and more
elegant than my
monsters. And it appeared in it.
Still, I could
not say if it was near my hand or my foot. The light fascina-
ted me. It was the opposite of what was and it was
as if for the first time
that I used my eyes. And soon other things of lights
appeared and there were
thousands and millions and billions of them and the
nothingness was ornamen-
ted with them. Now there was a hum of vibration that
came from the lights and
it drew great arcs of circles of light around the universe
and now there were
colors and flaming hues thrust boldly into space and
there were planets and
these things were cradles in the endless blackness.
I was enchanted by the lights and the newness of the
things and I could not
take my eyes away from them. There existed no words
to express the exhuberant
infinity of details and of processes and of transformations
of atoms and
stars that proliferated in rapid jumps of beauty through
the thin, wavering
spaces of the imperturbable abyss. From the smallest
bit of a thing to the
most gigantic formation the flow of change trembled
through them and every-
thing was in a flux of a freshness that had no end.
I am very curious. All things delight me. It was quite
useless to try to find
something that truly bored me. Yet I must have become
tired, or my mind wan-
dered into the investigation of a certain detail whose
fragile potential
fascinated me. I saw forms that were previously still
and now were moving with a motion and a purpose
of their own and they possessed the dream-like
quality of being able to die.
I must have fallen asleep.
The tree awoke me. Its leaves were scratching
the window. My body, whose feet
and arms I could not see, was bathed in sunlight. The
sky was blue and the
white forms in it were clouds and I saw a bird whose
feathers were red.
For several minutes I lay there enjoying the fresh
smells of the air and the
earth.
I touched the ripe pimple on my nose.
Certainly, to be alive was a wonder. To feel, to think,
to be aware of the
life around you. In school I had studied the varied
methods of scientists
and philosophers, who had dissected ideas, cut through
the world, using the
razor of words, while in their turn, scientists, with
the passion of their
instruments and the austere energy of numbers, reconstructed
the enchantment
of the world from mazes of probabilities, the random
seesaw of electrons,
and the directions of the dreamless solutions of their
equations written in
chalk. I followed the ponderously icy and sometimes
heated reasoning of
these dramatic personages and in any case it was a
delight to be shown how
the whims of creation were established by the
force of their words or came
to be by the order of the solutions of their equations,
equations which
shared their economic beauty and compactness with the
forms of sea shells.
Forever I am grateful to these men for the mental pleasures
they had shown
me during the exodus of many afternoons and starless
evenings, like the
pleasure obtained in painting one endless geometric
flower or in listening
to a perfect tone repeated endlessly in the short,
dark labyrinthe of the
inner ear. I had been entertained very expertly, by
minds obliged with a
kind of restless gift, with a ceaseless tossing of
ability, to plunge into
the tropical corridors of an analgesic intricasy.
Yet I could not hold long these ideas, though elegant
like the hard lines
of rain that lighten the clouds in the sky. I am a
simple man and, to tell
the truth, I have not felt myself this need for the
erosion of the world,
this lip-biting questioning of the stars, that seemed
to have driven these
men of genius, in whom even the rock of sleep must
splinter in their dreams
and they wake with the feeling of holding the wind
at their back in their
bright version of sleep. The discomfort of doubt has
passed me by.
Perhaps it is because I have always believed in God.
I can not imagine a time when out of spite or discontent
I had chosen to be
blind to Him. Even as a boy I knew there was a God,
as I knew there were
oceans and fish and snakes and birds and tigers, as
I knew I was alive.
Yet people, acting as I wanted, did not see me as a
religious boy.
I thought it was pointless to make a fuss over God,
erecting statues,
cathedrals, repetitions of monumental toys supposed
to delight Him.
What should He care for these things that are like
pimples on the vast face
of this tiny earth?
Too close to Him to make a show of it, I kept silent.
I think about Him, at any time, walking in the
street, suddenly while read-
ing a book, when I wake in the morning, at a sound
or sight or memory. His
image touches me like a breath and a prophesy. More
exactly, I experience
an illumination of Him, a whisper in my blood, that
makes up the pre-symbols
and the ghostly alphabet of my thought, the stoneless
imagery of my sentence-
less communication. It is more a sense. A presence
of God, as of the light
or the dark of the passing day. It is the thing that
I breathe in, and exhale
with my lungs, that gives color to my blood,
is the power that powers my
heart.
God is the thought in my mind that never tires me.
It is fortunate that I do not work now. I
stay in my room. I look out of
my window. I walk through the garden of the park. I
eat very little.
I read. I enjoy the experience of all my senses. I
see, touch, hear,
smell, taste, with such recurrent new delight that
I wonder often at the
truth of my age, for I am no baby or smooth-faced boy.
Of course I do not
remember my birth, but it is a curious thing that no
one seems to know when
I was born. I have asked my mother and she speaks,
her lips move, and she
harkens to me, but the answer is not in the physics
of sound, for no number
reaches me, no conjunction of planets, and she smiles
so tenderly in her
silent figure that I have not asked her again. It is
of no great matter
after all.
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