Igniatius, after speaking, does not really know what has happened to him. He begins to write so as not to lose entirely what has happened to him.
Where one may observe that a situation is a knot of relationships in the process of transforming itself. It already contains a before and an after, a tension, a precarious balance. Here, precariousness, far from being a flaw, becomes a possibility. A stone is therefore never merely a stone; it is a stone still holding the day's warmth while the air has already begun to cool. A branch is never merely a branch; it is a branch whose shadow glides across a neighbouring trunk as the light slowly fades. The sea is never merely the sea; it is an expanse of water whose unceasing caresses gradually rob the cliffs of their impatience while the wind, arriving from the open sea, still hesitates before crossing the grasses on the heights. In other words, it may be that, for Igniatius, every element exists only through the complex situation that brings it into being at that precise moment. It is this web of relationships that, through its gentle yet persistent assaults, will eventually give him his voice... that singular breathing for which he is searching.
Igniatius' Journal
For a long time now, the sea had remained there. It seemed to have forgotten the first shore to which it had once addressed itself. Or perhaps it was the other way around... At that hour, when the sun had already begun its slow approach toward the cliffs, nothing appeared capable of disturbing that immense, creeping patience. The waves, as though slowed, still reached the stones, but they no longer struck them. They dissolved against them with that slowness that belongs to things approaching their end... and which, by returning again and again, no longer seek to persuade.
The rocks descended toward the sea, although one could no longer tell where that descent truly began. Seen from afar, whenever my gaze consented to remain with them, what first appeared motionless gradually revealed a suspended slope so ancient that it seemed to belong less to the stone than to time itself. Between their long dark fissures, a few grasses, so slender they seemed to have forgotten the wind, nevertheless continued to bend. They resisted nothing. They seemed only to accompany a movement that had begun long before they themselves were born.
Higher up, a light already growing weary slipped across the ridges of the basalt without ever quite managing to leave them. It lingered within the roughness of the rock, disappeared beneath a fold, then reappeared a little farther on along a paler edge, as though the stone possessed its own peculiar way of holding on to the day before finally letting it go.
I had long been walking through the delicate shadow of dusk when birds crossed high overhead, still within the light of the setting sun, which, like them, seemed to be fleeing.
I could not have said which of these two heights drew my gaze more strongly: the one where they continued on their way, or the other, still more secret, almost invisible, where a pale light continued to move quietly among the stones.
They were already far away when I truly lifted my eyes. The sky seemed empty. Yet something continued, without ceasing, to pass through it while I remained motionless.
It was not the passing of the birds that held my attention. They had already disappeared... It was something else. As though their departure had left behind a path that nothing came to close again.
Around me, nothing seemed to have noticed that they were gone. The grasses continued their slow inclination. A thin trickle of water, itself almost invisible—and increasingly so—slid down the face of a dark wall before vanishing beneath a broader stone. The sea continued to arrive. The light continued to leave the rocks without ever entirely abandoning them.
I resumed my walk with the strange feeling that things never wait for our gaze before beginning to exist. They continue a work of which we sometimes catch only the briefest moment, as though we had entered a conversation that had begun centuries before.
When I opened my notebook, I did not have the feeling that I had anything to tell.
There is, however, one sentence that still troubles me:
"It merely seemed to me that a place still remained open between the page and that which, without ceasing, continued to pass through it."
For a long time now, the sea had remained there. It seemed to have forgotten the first shore to which it had once addressed itself. Or perhaps it was the other way around... At that hour, when the sun had already begun its slow approach toward the cliffs, nothing appeared capable of disturbing that immense, creeping patience. The waves, as though slowed, still reached the stones, but they no longer struck them. They dissolved against them with that slowness that belongs to things approaching their end... and which, by returning again and again, no longer seek to persuade.
The rocks descended toward the sea, although one could no longer tell where that descent truly began. Seen from afar, whenever my gaze consented to remain with them, what first appeared motionless gradually revealed a suspended slope so ancient that it seemed to belong less to the stone than to time itself. Between their long dark fissures, a few grasses, so slender they seemed to have forgotten the wind, nevertheless continued to bend. They resisted nothing. They seemed only to accompany a movement that had begun long before they themselves were born.
Higher up, a light already growing weary slipped across the ridges of the basalt without ever quite managing to leave them. It lingered within the roughness of the rock, disappeared beneath a fold, then reappeared a little farther on along a paler edge, as though the stone possessed its own peculiar way of holding on to the day before finally letting it go.
I had long been walking through the delicate shadow of dusk when birds crossed high overhead, still within the light of the setting sun, which, like them, seemed to be fleeing.
I could not have said which of these two heights drew my gaze more strongly: the one where they continued on their way, or the other, still more secret, almost invisible, where a pale light continued to move quietly among the stones.
They were already far away when I truly lifted my eyes. The sky seemed empty. Yet something continued, without ceasing, to pass through it while I remained motionless.
It was not the passing of the birds that held my attention. They had already disappeared... It was something else. As though their departure had left behind a path that nothing came to close again.
Around me, nothing seemed to have noticed that they were gone. The grasses continued their slow inclination. A thin trickle of water, itself almost invisible—and increasingly so—slid down the face of a dark wall before vanishing beneath a broader stone. The sea continued to arrive. The light continued to leave the rocks without ever entirely abandoning them.
I resumed my walk with the strange feeling that things never wait for our gaze before beginning to exist. They continue a work of which we sometimes catch only the briefest moment, as though we had entered a conversation that had begun centuries before.
When I opened my notebook, I did not have the feeling that I had anything to tell.
There is, however, one sentence that still troubles me:
"It merely seemed to me that a place still remained open between the page and that which, without ceasing, continued to pass through it."
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