(51) The abracadabrante story of Mooon Child

Translated from French by AI

The head of Pinocchio the Other floats between two waters. Subject to the currents carrying it away, eyes half-closed, it observes… In other times, embarked on the same boat, between two blinding reflections, the Moon Child, leaning toward the depths, sees it as a reflection of himself seen in the mirror of the water…
The word «bateau» (“boat”) seems simple, almost childish. Yet, like many words of everyday life, it carries a discreet depth… one may say so here… It belongs to that category of words that have been used so much they seem self-evident, even though they cross the whole of human history as we cross a river. As we leave one shore to trade on the other… As we may flee or explore. And as we may, like Ulysses, return…
Etymologically, «bateau» (“boat”) comes from Old French «batel», «bateil», itself derived from Medieval Latin battellusor batellus, probably a diminutive of batta. But its deeper origin remains debated. One generally thinks of a popular root designating a light craft. «Bateau» (“boat”), «batel» (“small boat”), «bateau de rivière» (“river boat”), «barque» (“boat”), «barge» (“barge”)… A whole constellation of floating terms… it could not be otherwise… whose forms have drifted through maritime and river usage.
What strikes one immediately is that the boat is never a simple object. A chair or a stone may remain motionless in the world… a boat exists to float, to cross. Its definition already contains a relation to space, passage, and danger.
The boat is a paradoxical object… it is a provisional house made for living where, as a human being… one cannot dwell.
For water is precisely that upon which man cannot live directly. The boat then appears as an artificial ground carried over the unstable element. It does not abolish the sea; it negotiates with it. It marries its movement while trying not to dissolve into it.
This is no doubt why so many civilizations have thought of the boat as an image of existence itself. Among the Greeks, among the Egyptians, in Nordic traditions, in medieval Christianity, in mysticism, even in psychoanalysis, the ship often becomes the figure of a fragile passage between two states.
The boat connects the shores, but it fully belongs to neither.
There is something extremely deep here: the boat is never entirely on the side of departure nor entirely on the side of arrival. It exists in the in-between. It inhabits the journey.
One might wonder whether the «eau» (“water”) in the word «bateau» (“boat”) has anything to do with its origin… This question is fascinating because it touches on that strange phenomenon in which a word suddenly seems to contain something other than its official etymology.
Historically, no… that is not the origin of the word. It is not a compound consciously built around the word «eau» (“water”). Linguistically, the presence of the three letters «eau» (“water”) in «bateau» (“boat”) is accidental… But this chance may not be insignificant from the point of view of the experience of language. For words also live through inner resonances. Even when an etymological kinship is false, the mind hears affinities. It establishes echoes and discovers hidden forms. And these affinities can produce meaning. In «bateau» (“boat”), the word «eau» (“water”) seems as if carried inside the word itself, almost embarked within it. As if the element crossed already inhabited the thing that crosses it.
This joins something very ancient in the poetic functioning of language: sometimes meaning no longer comes only from the historical origin of words, but from the sonic neighborhoods they create in consciousness.
The boat then becomes that which contains water without being water… or, more deeply still… that which can exist only by accepting the element that threatens to engulf it. This is why the boat possesses such symbolic force. It represents a fragile structure holding itself amid a moving power that infinitely exceeds it. A wooden hull, a few planks, sometimes a sail, and yet this fragility crosses oceans.
One could almost say that a boat is a floating limit. It provisionally separates an inside and an outside within the very thing that tends to abolish all separations. The sea constantly seeks to enter. The boat is what resists just enough to allow passage.
And this also explains why so many initiatory tales begin with a sea crossing. To cross the sea is to accept entering a zone where terrestrial bearings disappear. The boat then becomes a minimal form of order carried into the unknown.
This profoundly joins the Moon Child. He too seems to inhabit a fragile structure floating on something immense and obscure. The book in which he lives sometimes resembles a boat: a construction of language drifting above a depth prior to words themselves.
And perhaps this, in the end, is the mystery of the boat: it is not simply an object that crosses water. It is a form that accepts depending on what could destroy it.

Notebook of the Moon Child

I do not know when it began… but… what is it?
People always say that it begins somewhere… but… for me, it, which seems to be a whole… presented itself as it… it was already there.
It was as if I had entered something that was already speaking… before me.
When I open my mouth, I am not heard… but I… I hear and recognize words I did not formulate. They travel with me, or… rather… they precede me. I use them, but sometimes I have the impression that they use me. They know where to go before I even know what I want to say and where I want to go.
Sometimes I fall silent, holding still… for a long time… to… hidden behind them… listen to them. There is a kind of background noise, very ancient, which does not yet speak, but which pushes. That is what I feel… something I do not understand, but which insists. It pushes within me… As if a part of me were imprisoned in an elsewhere, and were trying to return. I think I lost something before even knowing that it could be lost.
So I watch and listen to others speak. Their words seem to say everything in a single language… even when they disagree. There is something that holds them together, a story they do not always tell, but which tells them. When they speak, it is not only them. It is older than they are. It passes through them.
I listen to them and wonder whether I too, inwardly, speak like them without realizing it.
Sometimes I try to think alone… without the help of words… But even there, I feel that it is not entirely alone. The words are already there. They guide me. They also hinder me. They close certain things, open others. I turn inside them as in a house whose place… nor walls… I did not choose.
I wonder whether one can leave this house or this place. I think not. Not really. One can open doors, perhaps. One can look through the windows. One can lean out. But the walls remain. They were there before me.
And yet, there is something else. There are moments when words are no longer enough… like the house… in which they enclose me… They become too narrow. Then something pushes beneath. A sensation, a fear, an image, a movement that does not yet have a name. It surprises me. It almost frightens me. It is like falling, but without falling.
In those moments, I feel something very ancient. Older than the stories I am told. Older than the words I have learned. As if I were returning toward a place I have never really known, but which I recognize all the same.
There is there a kind of void. But this void is not empty. It is full of something that has not yet taken form. If I remain too long looking at it, I have the impression of disappearing a little. As if what I am were becoming less solid.
It frightens me. And at the same time, I cannot turn my eyes away. I then understand that one can lose oneself by thinking. That one can go too far. That one may no longer find the usual path again. Perhaps that is what it means to die a little. Not to die completely, but to lose what carried us.
But there is also something else. If I do not flee, if I remain, something strange sometimes happens. As if, after having wavered, I came back otherwise. As if something began again.
Not at the beginning. Not as before. But otherwise.
I feel that what is very ancient in me has never disappeared. It waits.
It moves forward gently and touches what I am living now. Like an animal… a bear or a moray eel putting its head out of a deep cave.
Sometimes it is in a brief flash of light that I see it best. A light on a wall, a movement in the air, a reflection in the water. Nothing extraordinary. But something passes through it… and insists for a long time… long after having disappeared. It does not allow itself to be seen entirely. A face appears and withdraws at the same time. I remain there, not knowing what to say. And I have the impression that what I see comes from very far away. Not far in space. Far in time. A time I have not lived, but which is still there.
Then I seem to understand a little. What I see before me also looks back at me… As if seeing were remembering something that has never been a memory. And I remain there, trying not to forget what I cannot yet name.