— Look, it seems that the Moon Child has come out of his cage…
— Could it be that he escaped?
— Escaped from what… I ask you…
— Listen to him, he speaks in his notebook…
Notebook of the Moon Child
I look, and something opens before I understand. Suddenly the cage is there beside me. I recognize it at once. It used to contain me. Now it tilts, swings in every direction, empty, almost given back to itself. I am there too. Outside the cage. Seated, but without any true support. My body rests and hesitates at once. My feet hang in a space that does not yet receive me. Then a question passes through me: how did I come out of there? I keep my eyes closed. Before me, from the sky… or within me, something approaches. I perceive it before I can name it. Two points of light move forward like two small luminous planets. Two gazes opening and closing in slow movements… appearing and disappearing… repeating, in accelerated form, the monthly cycle of the moon… the one in the sky. But they are nearer, more insistent. The great moon, impassive, remains behind, broad, almost full, and now its two emissaries draw near and look at me. The light changes place. They come from the distance they are leaving in order to meet me. The body that bears it is made of night. Like my coat and the hat too wide that envelops me. This hat does not merely cover. It contains me and protects me in the night… it offers me a dwelling.
I do not enter into darkness: I dwell in it.
The owl, for that is how I see it, moves through this night with calm ease. It sees where everything remains suspended for others. It moves effortlessly through this space that I know without traversing it in the same way. It sees with its eyes open in the night. I am able to see with my eyes closed in the night. Two gestures, one same belonging. It attends. It is present to what happens, and what happens is reflected in it. Like a living mirror. Then the question shifts: is what appears before me, or does it arise from within me? The answer unravels as I search for it. Everything holds together on a single plane. The outside comes near, the inside surfaces. The scene takes shape at the very moment I receive it. I understand that seeing has never consisted in capturing what is already there. Seeing, here, brings forth. What I perceive does not entirely pre-exist. It takes form in this passage. I have never lacked vision. It simply followed another path. I have never looked as they look. I let things come. And what came found no place in their words. Their language encloses. It names what is already there. What I receive asks for something else. So I remain silent. A full and charged silence. A light circulates. It does not come from the day. It passes through the night. It does not dazzle, it accompanies.
I do not know where it comes from. I know that it illuminates otherwise. And now it is there, in those two eyes fixed on me. The nearness becomes intense. Almost cutting. As if what was taking shape in me were assuming a face before me. I remain.
I do not try to flee that gaze. Nor do I try to seize it. I remain in this instant where everything holds in balance. The cage is no longer the center. It persists, displaced, tilted, like an old form losing its power. I am no longer contained. I am in the passage… outside that cage… Coming out is not enough.
One must remain in contact with this apparition… but I do not speak yet. Speech will perhaps come.
For now, something looks… or rather… something makes visible.
I remain in this inhabited night… with the owl… with its two nearby moons.
And I feel that what appears gives itself only in this attention.
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