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Where nothing is lacking to the one who is present without presenting himself before that which presents itself, and where this presence, even before the gaze distinguishes what it is looking at, seems already to belong to the depths themselves...
When the last eddies have drifted far enough away for the waters to recover that slow circulation which seemed never to have left them, although only moments before they had appeared to yield to an agitation of which nothing now remains except a memory already dissolved into their own movement, the Moon Child waits for nothing, because nothing is lacking to one who is present without presenting himself before that which presents itself, and because this presence, even before the gaze distinguishes what it is looking at, seems to belong to the depths themselves, as though the currents, long before encountering his body, had already passed through him, without there being any need to decide where they began, where they ended, or even whether they were passing through him at all, or merely continuing, through him as through those waters which never cease meeting without ever quite becoming one, a journey begun in a depth of which no other depth could truly claim to be the origin.
Then, very slowly, a midnight-blue mass consents to become visible, like a body emerging from darkness, yet without possessing the nature of darkness itself; rather, like a darkness which, after breathing for so long without form, finally agrees to let the immense rhythm of its breathing appear, so that the word whale, which might come to mind, seems almost impatient—not because it is false, but because it already closes over that which, precisely, remains open, for this presence belongs as much to the depths as to that other depth, still invisible, where it must nevertheless rise again to breathe, as though living consisted less in remaining within a single world than in never ceasing to join several worlds together... without any one of them ever being capable of wholly containing the others.
Its gaze... but is it still a gaze, or merely the movement of the waters continuing within it their slow drift? It then encounters the red of the timber, and he cannot tell whether it prolongs a gangway or remains what survives of a ship, because both thoughts present themselves together, neither requiring the other to disappear, and the word wreck, arriving almost despite him, is at once carried away by another current that prevents it from coming to rest, since a wreck presupposes a shipwreck, whereas absolutely nothing yet allows one to know what shipwreck might be at issue here: that of a vessel, perhaps—but why that one rather than another? Why that of the one who steered her rather than of the one who had just left her, or of the one who would never reach her, or even of someone of whom no trace appears? Little by little it becomes impossible to know whether the wood preserves the memory of an event, or whether it is the event itself that is still seeking, within that wood which has remained present, the form through which it might one day consent to let itself be recognized.
And while this thought—which is perhaps not a thought at all—continues to drift without seeking to know where it is going, the fire in turn appears, not as an answer, still less as another enigma, but with the simplicity of things that have no need to justify their presence in order to be there, so that it becomes almost impossible to decide whether the gangway leads toward it or away from it, whether the ship came to rest beside those flames or whether they were already burning before the ship had even become a ship, because all these possibilities seem less to exclude one another than to be slowly carried by a single current whose direction escapes us without ever ceasing to be perceptible, just as the deep waters respond to the winds that move the clouds—not because they imitate them, but because both alike obey, each according to its own substance, a movement greater than themselves, one which belongs to them no more than they belong to it.
And perhaps only then do the whale, the fire, the timber, the currents, and the Moon Child cease to be separate presences—not in order to become symbols of one another, but because they seem to partake in a single breathing whose beginning none of them possesses, whose ending none of them will doubtless ever know, and which carries them all, silently, toward that ever deeper depth where whatever presents itself has no need yet to be named in order to be fully present.
When the last eddies have drifted far enough away for the waters to recover that slow circulation which seemed never to have left them, although only moments before they had appeared to yield to an agitation of which nothing now remains except a memory already dissolved into their own movement, the Moon Child waits for nothing, because nothing is lacking to one who is present without presenting himself before that which presents itself, and because this presence, even before the gaze distinguishes what it is looking at, seems to belong to the depths themselves, as though the currents, long before encountering his body, had already passed through him, without there being any need to decide where they began, where they ended, or even whether they were passing through him at all, or merely continuing, through him as through those waters which never cease meeting without ever quite becoming one, a journey begun in a depth of which no other depth could truly claim to be the origin.
Then, very slowly, a midnight-blue mass consents to become visible, like a body emerging from darkness, yet without possessing the nature of darkness itself; rather, like a darkness which, after breathing for so long without form, finally agrees to let the immense rhythm of its breathing appear, so that the word whale, which might come to mind, seems almost impatient—not because it is false, but because it already closes over that which, precisely, remains open, for this presence belongs as much to the depths as to that other depth, still invisible, where it must nevertheless rise again to breathe, as though living consisted less in remaining within a single world than in never ceasing to join several worlds together... without any one of them ever being capable of wholly containing the others.
Its gaze... but is it still a gaze, or merely the movement of the waters continuing within it their slow drift? It then encounters the red of the timber, and he cannot tell whether it prolongs a gangway or remains what survives of a ship, because both thoughts present themselves together, neither requiring the other to disappear, and the word wreck, arriving almost despite him, is at once carried away by another current that prevents it from coming to rest, since a wreck presupposes a shipwreck, whereas absolutely nothing yet allows one to know what shipwreck might be at issue here: that of a vessel, perhaps—but why that one rather than another? Why that of the one who steered her rather than of the one who had just left her, or of the one who would never reach her, or even of someone of whom no trace appears? Little by little it becomes impossible to know whether the wood preserves the memory of an event, or whether it is the event itself that is still seeking, within that wood which has remained present, the form through which it might one day consent to let itself be recognized.
And while this thought—which is perhaps not a thought at all—continues to drift without seeking to know where it is going, the fire in turn appears, not as an answer, still less as another enigma, but with the simplicity of things that have no need to justify their presence in order to be there, so that it becomes almost impossible to decide whether the gangway leads toward it or away from it, whether the ship came to rest beside those flames or whether they were already burning before the ship had even become a ship, because all these possibilities seem less to exclude one another than to be slowly carried by a single current whose direction escapes us without ever ceasing to be perceptible, just as the deep waters respond to the winds that move the clouds—not because they imitate them, but because both alike obey, each according to its own substance, a movement greater than themselves, one which belongs to them no more than they belong to it.
And perhaps only then do the whale, the fire, the timber, the currents, and the Moon Child cease to be separate presences—not in order to become symbols of one another, but because they seem to partake in a single breathing whose beginning none of them possesses, whose ending none of them will doubtless ever know, and which carries them all, silently, toward that ever deeper depth where whatever presents itself has no need yet to be named in order to be fully present.
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