I have secrets that’s normal it’s true about me as it is about others when I run through my own secrets it’s like crossing barbed-wire fences that soil my shirt and make bloodstains on my hands and my knees down to the heels not at all in the morning when there is too much mystery in my crazy canopy bed that I built like a large armoire I pretend I’m breathing or walking while moving away from myself and making sure to scream mysterious syllables that sometimes produce a list of beautiful fruits and vegetables that I put in my jacket pocket then I thrust my hand into the list it’s easy to follow with my finger to understand and draw better fences in the end it’s true I am on the verge of tears but in a state of fatigue not at all.
People think badly of us because we live in a village with a château vineyards and a post office as landscape and because we hide behind the windows in an armoire in the far reaches of our hearts not at all not at all often I say it’s nothing let’s give it a good soaping dunk the loofah glove in the water and let’s go back to square one to the great cry of dawn let out at birth and then let’s dive once again into the tenderness of mothers and let’s suckle their breath their breast their life let’s suckle from the very first day before going off to wander again estrangement will surely come.
At the château when opening my mail my hands tremble because of age and memory which wrap around the wrists and the beautiful day crouched in my brain like a magic charm deep inside me that makes me tremble with fear they say this often happens when someone is plunged into the void after making mistakes in her language for plunging into the void of one’s language and being afraid are similar especially when no sketches remain.
In the morning when looking at the shores of the lake I hold my breath for the roses the shrubs pruned into round shapes the giant trees the wooden floor make me groan as does my mother’s great beauty when she is dancing just before falling into the lake with time people have forgotten nobody recalls having seen her leaning over her transparent torment which raised a scorching wind right into my hand and which I was watching closely to see the boats head out with imprints of full-body contact tucked into time yes I love taking the time to imagine how it happened when my mother fell into the lake to finally refresh her hope.
The village is not the village without the flies and their buzzing in the landscape that yields like a great fruit tree a darling of a tree that provides good wood and offers the knife the opportunity to cut into the true shape of secrets not at all it must be said the well-drawn shape of a wounded man for it takes ink or a lead pencil a memory whited-out in real chalk to approach a wounded man one must take pleasure in the true shapes of women enjoying their breakfast while watching the lake in the trembling air that swallows up the light the wind the fog the roses the entire landscape of death and life today my body is restless wild with words and strike-throughs not at all it is just bruised all over like in a dream or when in the early morning I go to the post office to buy white envelopes for my secrets there are strange flavours in my mouth tickly manoeuvres of goldfish or crazy tongues slightly naughty always very soft and full of surprises that make you rush headfirst into the abyss with hands and thoughts flapping so as to hurt yourself not at all because of the strike-throughs in the wood the pieces of bark scattered over the workshop floor I wear myself out making useful holes and looking inside my memory at images of time in the wood it’s as if I were opening and closing the pages of a celestial dictionary at will and always falling upon the words hair fur and sex until a bunch of distant images arise at the same time as June when she kneels in front of me her tongue making little cross-strokes in my full-moon fur my enchanted-lake fur we should do it again so that I too can stroke through June’s fur.
In the garden I hear Tatiana’s voice repeating beware this beauty is dangerous beware the faces of people who are beautiful heartbreakers beware the holes in darkness that we enjoy photographing believing we are speaking the truth or something important yet it’s quite easy to understand that words yield at the slightest opportunity amid birdsongs and clever manoeuvres that do not explain the misery of living beings and the buzzing of flies in ears attentive to the language of humans petals vines and brambles that you wind tightly round stones the shadows of stones and words here I am caught in the trap of words that do not drown out suffering so many cleft words and worried embraces that I no longer know how to make use or hope of so evil and mean has the world become that the day before yesterday church bells started ringing again with a hellish noise that threatens any shaky belief they cover the buzzing of flies the other sounds make no echo in the shade of the lovely afternoon I wait for June’s hand to lift my sweater very close to us I hear the steps of a small animal in autumn’s new foliage a sound like the rustling of a crumpling page I wait I watch my face still looks for light in the holes of my mother’s night the foreign tongue is now in my head daily it crowds me with its words and burns me pressures me with verb tenses that wrap around me searing ribbons sticky tape then it erases me regardless I listen with my muscles and when it’s too much I stroke and I strike lather and lather erase whole pages of the book of law while eating my salad.
People think badly of us because I sleep with myself in a canopy bed they’re right the bed is ridiculous with its pink silk and apple green which is not a true colour come siesta time it’s obvious that beds are full of stories full of murders and blood it’s as obvious as scanning the pages of civilization with bonnets turbans bicornes tiaras top hats and baseball caps while always doing whatever runs through your head and a lot of money of course I’m careful I always move forward stealthily and allow myself to roll around in the heat changing my image at every page and every hour I can now rid myself of my own presence change the colour of the night in me change languages to get closer to the secrets on the reverse side of the real oh! how I love to clean the universe with this soft oil behind the characters’ backs but we must beware because things stroke things scratch things whistle and hiss immoderately when comes the hour of the bells.
Since this morning I’ve been wandering through my memory like in a theatre I open and close the curtains I have learned the text by heart I haven’t yet had time to think about my makeup when the bells won’t stop ringing like wild women they make my text inaudible illegible so then I prefer somebody to play the piano behind my back this way I can hide my feelings I never pretend to be somebody who is wounded like my brother when he shows me his sketchbook my brother I don’t know why has left for town with fruit in his jacket pocket why in his hunting pouch he put sketches with my name and June’s on them sketches like those he showed me on my birthday and it was frightening.
Nobody can remember everything exactly everything which is why my armoires are empty except when on tiptoes I slip a white envelope into one of them it’s not a secret for anyone I slip words into my tiny armoires and have never dared destroy them even though they take up too much space next to the crystal carafes I cannot always pretend that this is happening inside me really for I am me and many others at the same time it is frightening I often go to the hotel to become someone who stretches out next to a woman to sleep in a large room with flowers and a black leather sofa I drink white wine then I get to work while listening to the noises and silences of my damned fellow humans who kill and receive slaves for free without a contract in no time at all it’s easy and it makes me want to slip my joy into a black hole when I don’t know what to do with my fur I try to remember my pleasures by filing them in chronological order but things of the past are finery and fences too high with their bars they make me feel ashamed they are like a curtain of smooth nails falling on my face all sorts of big scratches that form a grey screen in front of me I prefer hotel rooms with wooden benches already notched and bruised with coarse words like those upon which I sometimes sleep in the summertime I can spend days without speaking to anyone I don’t understand why my sister and her friend June look like two madwomen when I speak to them softly and give them my heart.
I o
ften tell myself I’ve understood it all not at all but what is it I’ve understood so well I can pretend so well that it’s necessary to understand everything I don’t exist for nothing my sketchbook is proof of this and I never cry except evenings when I absolutely have to sleep in a park so I don’t disturb anyone and because it helps me concentrate on the laughter bursting from all over town women laugh in such ways that we can’t see the fences in their breathing and thus I can often touch their fur before going to sleep this morning when I woke up I was myself again I don’t understand why I am myself without warning as though since I have been sleeping at the château living in the foreign language has crushed my identity this morning when I got up this morning I truly felt I had reintegrated my movements my breathing my worries authentic and ancient autumn is coming that’s how it is coming for sure I am going to be cold and mix up my characters between the lines the number of sketches the naughty pleasures fear and the people I often call us I will have to learn to remain in suspense over my sketches to shut my eyes before diving into the blackness when black occurs great big marker of night among the planets I can plainly see that night constantly changes the shade of its jet black and that this is conducive to fear and to the swirling around of words in my mouth when someone talks to me with sincerity in the first person I have trouble breathing as if there were a fine dust of silence and cosmos pouring into me a cannibal force capable of swallowing my own dreams my fictional eyes that so often ache will tell me if it’s good or ridiculous to get so carried away into the universe with one’s sorrows and one’s armoires somebody has spread the rumour that my armoires are antiques I don’t want them taken away from me all my envelopes are stuck into the slits glued together with the bark’s saliva Kim cannot understand all she thinks about is the north and its ice that reddens lips and cheeks each one of my envelopes has wind in its sails even shut into the back of an armoire I would need mirrors like those in hotel rooms to watch everything that moves for example the silence coming and going from one wall to the other above my head before diving toward me so as to soften my eyes yes I would need other mirrors to face my characters the foreign language deletes my landmarks I am no longer able to describe the village to name the lake and the city deep inside me the horizon is receding we say this about the lines of the hand too yes it’s as if my whole body disappears when I read the headlines on the newspapers lying on the shop counter the world inside me becomes more complicated the further I get into editing images yes indeed I lose my bearings it’s difficult because of sunsets fading and of Kim leaving soon for sure my shop will be empty and I will be worried due to my good intentions all of this soils my head and damages my sight I so often imagine us heading toward the night.
The world is a huge horse leaning on his shadow with letters all around helping him stand up in the garden or in a child’s room the horse carries the child north of the silhouette of the Far North where nobody can see us and where everyone will wait for us in vain once just once in my life I pulled out my sketchbook to see if the horse could gallop between the village and the lake I drew close-ups of his eyes before felling an oak tree in the forest behind June’s shop and I made holes and made holes until all shadows had been exhausted then the horse appeared I hugged him close sweat running down my back on my eyelids nobody was afraid of me nor of the horse anymore nobody was really afraid of anything because for once I had made proper holes in the wood without building an armoire.
Talking to oneself doesn’t hurt a soul and many people in hotels do it quite naturally talking to oneself is not pretending to talk to someone who is on one’s mind or to whom one must repeat insults and sweet nothings like in childhood and the seasons it takes a lot of freedom to talk to oneself about the world we live in freedom is buried I cannot distinguish it under the thousands of pages of law that have come into being since the steel of guns has been firing here and there at the frontiers of the real no one law can be changed without another law authorizing it I enjoy talking alone in front of large mirrors in hotel rooms it helps me juggle the various facets of my body and the objects that decorate the room I am someone who readily acts out of fear that’s how it is when I walk three times by the same window that shows close-ups of people’s real lives it’s as if I were talking out loud to the invisible part of myself so as to not be afraid and so that it gives me joy I rearranged my armoires differently now I can count them there are ten I count only those from after those from before are in the forest scattered among the ferns the slugs and the logs of dead wood the others have little bars similar to crab-fishing cages they are smaller and each one has a white envelope in its centre inside which I do not leave a message this scares me too much like when Kim used to fill spoons with little white mounds and put flour in her nostrils so that her eyes took on these rare reflections that I then had to cross out with strokes in my sketchbook like this ||||||||||||||||||| taking care not to pierce the paper now for sure I’m worried about staying alive next to my sketches it’s out of the question to sell my armoires so that strangers can deposit their money and the turquoise blue of their dreamed lives in them.
Stay alive says the voice also applies to all girls whoever you are stay alive because of the smooth wind through the roses and through your raptures stay alive show yourself with your syllables and your images don’t be afraid to touch your melancholy stay alive despite the flies and the burns the little decorations everyone’s closed armoires stay alive arms open like pages of a dictionary breathe high and loud between the signs the mirrors the little sketches don’t forget your grisgris and Latin grammar stay alive despite your mother in her bathtub terrorists and liars stay alive in the moon’s axis and touch go ahead touch your mirrors in the right places before watching yourself leave stay alive like somebody who is not you.
What is it in my head that makes me think I am someone else who cannot truly resemble me or maybe the opposite it is frightening this carpet of words the scroll of images and nothing to explain if we are here if we are pretending to be here if we are with someone inside ourselves whom we love or who splits our head in two so that our thoughts scatter deep into the cosmos and that at last we may cry fully emptied of our breathing.
Sometimes I question my mother mere mortal though somehow she shouldn’t be using words allowed in the foreign language and not at all necessary in mine where does this taste for immortality come from which always becomes more complicated once one’s mother is dead once one has scrubbed and scrubbed her closely with sweet oils and voluptuous silences that always open onto the same landscape with a lake in the middle whose depth is so inconceivable that we need to keep repeating this is no dream to keep reminding ourselves we truly are of woman born and will need to take our time to comprehend all of this and no longer think about fences in breathing.
I always carry with me the clipping from an Oslo newspaper that I have kept since a long-ago March twelve black plastic bags lying side by side on the cement each one containing a human shape stuck to each bag is a rectangular piece of white paper and looking at the limp plastic one sort of gets the idea of garbage needing to be moved if we turn the photograph slightly the twelve black body bags become twelve women wearing niqabs I never talk about death I only know that in life there are fears that simplify meaning and prolong heavy silence.
Fences in Breathing Page 4