(96) The abracadabrante story of Child Moon

While Pinocchio the Other, suspended upon the thread of the story, attempts—apparently… and for the moment, in vain—to influence it, the two parrots, for their part, continue to speculate in their own fashion about what might explain this… or that…




— It happens to me sometimes…
— What happens to you?
— To lose the thread.
— The thread of what?
— The thread of this story…
— I would rather speak of a rope.
— Why is that?
— Because just as a rope does not begin with the rope, this story does not begin with the story.
— You are being mysterious again… What do you mean?
— It begins long before.
— Where… and when?
— In a multiplicity of threads which, at first glance, seem insignificant; taken individually, they possess neither the appearance nor the destiny of what they will become. And yet each of those threads is already a rope in potential.
— A rope in miniature!
— Yes, the sketch of a tension…
— But still far from being able to withstand anything…
— A thread is already a direction, already a possible pull. It can be drawn, it can be stretched, but it does not endure. You are right… it yields too quickly.
— It does not yet possess that strange capacity to endure under strain.
— This is where composition becomes important.
— To compose is not to add.
— It is not merely a matter of putting several threads together.
— If one takes two threads, they may lie side by side, but they remain independent.
— They merely coexist.
— Worse still, they may slide against one another.
— Ah!..
— The tension is not truly transmitted: it slips away…
— It is lost in that sliding.
— There is not yet any solidarity.
— With three threads, a possibility appears, but it remains fragile. If they are of different lengths, the tension is not distributed equally. One bears more than another, one slackens, a third becomes overstretched. The whole is not yet unified. There is a juxtaposition of efforts, but not yet a community of tension.
— What is missing?
— What is missing is not the number. It is the manner.