Fleeing the frantic diversity, he flounders toward his end. Pain as the gaze sees the ash settle, as it touches the memory of a weary gesture.
The flesh awaited an enormous eye closed upon its thought. Near the infinite shore, a heart seeks a raft.
Greeting his own diversity, he rises. Joy as the body enters memory. The flesh expected an eye to open upon sight. From the infinite shore the elusive raft approaches.
*
first sequence
There is a limit to the human gaze which circumscribes a void animated and brimming with the world.
There is air, and earth, and oceans teeming with creatures; there is the motion of beings and things and there is mankind, the witness of movement.
The human gaze is like an empty sky through which a cloud passes, or the ground beneath an animal’s paw, or an ocean where billions of fish evolve.
And it all comes to die, each and every thing comes to a standstill and dies in the human gaze. Each and every thing indicates to man that he is the theatre of a miracle, a miracle which comes to die within him in order to be seen and pondered.
The man who gazes is the term and buffer of motion, the term and buffer of the gesture which draws to a halt within him, the term and mutation into another gesture, another beginning. With an open gaze man is the subject of the world, the astonished subject of infinity.
The movement of creatures and things through space is a miracle that the human mind cannot fathom, but it teaches man that all struggle is futile, that the vast border which separates him from infinity is continuously redefined by it, that its cessation initiates a journey which depends upon him alone, that his miracle, equal to that of creation, could not occur without the proof of a reflection, without the fact that every human being feels their mind capsizing when they see what moves through the air, upon the earth and in the water, otherwise the vision’s flame would strike the open gaze like lightning striking a tree.
Standing in his skull, man sees the many creatures and things of this world then suddenly, his gaze turns back upon itself, suddenly his gaze turns toward its very source, toward the obscure depths where the mirror stands facing the world, the mirror of a gaze vaster than his own.
Man, standing in his open skull, sees the possibility of reproducing once, a hundred, a thousand times each and every moment of the miracle he witnesses, he sees the possibility of pondering the mystery whenever he desires. In this intangible mirror, man, standing in his open skull, can bring things to a standstill and ponder the image until he himself becomes the thinking mirror of mystery
The actual miracle, the reversal of the gaze opening towards its source, could not occur, however, without the presence of a movement which preceded our birth, if we did not possess a silence older than light itself.
There is, lying in the stuff of which we are made, a memory as old as the world, a memory whose dream has created the Earth and all that thrives upon it, a memory which listens to itself and pursues itself in the silence of things.
If the human gaze can penetrate the silence of things beyond its own perceptions, if the human gaze can conceive this silence to the point of expressing it in speech, it is because it can turn and look at the source of all sight, because when looking, one can hear what the ear cannot and when listening, one can visualize what the eye cannot see; it is because we can see the invisible beyond the visible and hear the inaudible beyond the audible. If the human gaze can question its own source and ponder the sight of the miracle beyond the actual miracle, it is because our gaze penetrates the world’s darkness, for it arises from the darkness.
If the human eye could see what it sees without understanding it, without even slightly penetrating the mystery of the miracle stretched before it, it would remain like a bottomless vase that the entire universe could never fill. Furthermore, to die is to become, knowing such agony, this broken vase which cannot hold anything that is poured into it. If man could see what he sees without understanding it, without perceiving a vague meaning, he would still be neither able to express his relationship to the world nor conceive of infinity.
To see beyond what the eye can grasp, to see the miracle for what it is, causes the deepest secret of things to penetrate the innermost utterance. Seeing beyond what the eye can grasp, to fathom the miracle and its immensity is to cause the hidden intelligence of all things to become human.
Open to the luminous rustling of the infinite horizon, each gaze captures silence, listens to it and plucks the flower of meaning. For nothing correct can be uttered without having been affirmed by listening intently and impartially to the inside of things; the affirmation of the very silence whose murmur closes behind each form.
for the moon
Who still takes the time to look at the disk which doesn’t blind, the female kin of the sun?
Round and silvery, it hangs in the starry sky and while gazing upon it, it appears to be the portal.
We feel it is nearby only to serve the Earth’s beauty, only to allow us to part from the Earth though our feet never leave the ground.
It hangs in the sky, round and silvery, flooding the river with a blue light. It radiates an horizon of love that even the fish perceive.
Hazy white bird hovering in the stillness of a dream, even the sap of plants recognizes its milky clarity and longs for it like an ocean of memory.
For the dead the moon is the memory of a dream which leads to life.
It sings the salt and ice that do not deny the sweet fire-fly.
It provides the sky with a canopy. Under its light, it seems like nothing has ever existed.
It is the natural star of madness, the forgotten thought of the present. Its gaze sometimes rescues us from the intellect and spreads the water of an ocean of peace.
(moon)
hanging in the sky
a phantom portal
and every dream rejects
its clarity
the drunkard takes refuge in its night
through its memory the dead
come to life
salt
snow
fire-flies its jewels
beneath the sky it hangs
a canopy
in its light it seems
like nothing
has ever existed
naturally mad
with the forgotten gaze of the present
it casts a pale of blue
upon the mind
Claude Margat
from In Silence, Three Skies Press 2007