If, for instance… (fragment retrouvé)

Friday the 13th
Digging through old papers, real and virtual…
Retrouvé, decades later, this fragment of a New York state of mind… 

If, for instance, there hadn't been three people running down the street, I'd never have met him. There should be no reason to go on like this. But this is a world where one must fend for oneself.

Moments of respite. Hot August afternoons when the world slows down to a primal speed.

A warm garden. Early summer. Something fresh about young growth. Something frightening as well, the potential for everything: bounty or disaster. Fresh love. Unexplored territory. Lawlessness. No patterns yet perceived. Soon, a path will have been chosen: left, right, straight, smooth, light, or dark. As of yet, all hold as much death as life. Odds at 100 to nothing. The bell curve was at tangent 0 or .000000000 [etc.] point 1.

It cannot be spoken at this stage. There is nothing to say but wait and see. Quantity cannot be measured without time. Quality can be, so there is interrogation as to the quality of the subject at hand.

Young. Is lawlessness a quality? What then of wisdom of age, or security of a basic, proven pattern? Instead, insecurity flows. A period of growth, of rapid change. Rootlessness, spinelessness? Can something liquid become fixed in an immobile signifier? Words do not express quality in motion, moments of life beyond their actuality. Another world, a world non-human? Of course, this world in its name alone ("non-human") is an impossibility. Qu'est-ce qu'on fait, là? Jusqu'à quel moment joue-t-on cette comédie?

Jusqu'à ce qu'elle soit finie. Comment saurait-on qu'elle est finie? On le saura, c'est tout. One moment brings realization of a realm change. Du coup, on n'est plus dans l'autre. S/Z. No definition. Everywhere vagueness. Nothing is grasped and held for even a second; the concept of speed does not exist because there is no time. Time is a notion of relativity. There is no before nor after.

A step must be taken. Who says "must"? Time. Time passes and eventually controls. One season metamorphoses into the next. Time can make itself felt, but nothing changes unless a barrier is broken.

Rain. Sun. Death. Time. Change.

Sans rien, rien ne bouge. L'éternel présent. Le moment où on vit, que le sang bat dans les veines et où on travaille. On travaille à vivre, à respirer, à baiser et à vomir. On monte on descend. Et un jour on crève pour que les élements divers du corps s'éparpillent et se reconstituent autrement formés. Plus ça change plus ça reste le même. Blue, brown, what's the difference? S'en foutisme atroce.

Privation can only be self induced. The community at large is only partly responsible for any particular thing. Within each grain there is an element of choice given the donnés reçus. Et avec ça, on vit ou on meurt. Bien ou mal. Sans jamais pouvoir distinguer le bon du mauvais. Living out of time makes judgement in contemporary values harder to make or to form. Water seeks its own level, but fights lovingly with disorder.

Rideau

New York, 1985