Breyten Breytenbach
Intimate Stranger
for
Levedi,
Kanthaka
and my Brother
One has it in mind to put together a book which when completed, reaching (for) completion, will consist of twenty-seven minor pieces of writing accompanied by twenty-seven watercolours. Twenty-seven, because it is as good a number as any and better than most, it contains the eternal nine, and this mind, seeking the Wondrous Mind on soiled paper, is still inked in with superstitions. When one is a blind ass walking on ice it is as well to count the number of steps and to imbue these with a saving grace, if not some frozen significance.
The book is called All One Horse. If you really must know, the title is culled from a Chang Tzu saying: ‘Heaven and earth are one finger, all things are one horse.’ This, by the way, also precisely indicates the contents, made up of a structure wrapped in themes and motives. Arguments of course are informed and/or illustrated by imagery or texture, or both. Images, again, depend on how far the horse of association can travel, as do textures which would be blank were it not for imagination — and there the finger goes galloping over uncharted regions determined by the life from which they echo forth. And life, the translation in other words, is nothing if not severable. The horse needs no rider.
One thing is as clear as the lotus having its roots in mud: in due time, well prepared but unexpected, like the opening of one eye, one will see the horned rabbit and the furry turtle crossing the nowhere mountain. The citation is from Hakuin’s Kaian koku go.
Girona, The Year of the Ass
Le pouvoir passe par l’organisation des idées des autres, de la culture des autres.
Otherness is a powerful factor of distraction, not only because it continually disturbs us and wrenches us from our intellectual thinking but also because the very possibility of its occurrence casts a hazy glow on the universe of objects that are situated at the edge of our attention but can at any moment become its centre.
C’est tellement facile d’en glisser un peu dans le vagin! Avec l’anus, c’est une partie qu’on n’a pas le droit de fouiller. Alors on regarde sous les bras, sous les pieds, on leur fait écarter les jambes et tousser. Il tombe parfois un couteau…
Era necessario che il futuro esploratore di mondi si liberasse dalla paura dell’assulamente diverso, e dall’impulso di morte che questa paura si portava sempre dietro.
We have absolutely no doubt in our minds that what we describe is happening and has been happening in the manner in which we describe it as happening.
When a thought suddenly arises it is known as ignorance.
Misschien kan een van de Disparates een illustratie zijn van deze omkering, waardoor het vermoede duister achter de uiterlijke dingen het zichtbare duister tussen hun geschonden brokstukken wordt. De ets toont een paard dat zijn hoofd omdraait om de berijder, een vrouw in een wit kleed, tussen zijn tanden te grijpen. Dat waarop je eens hebt gereden verneitigt je.
Ne craignez point, monsieur, la tortue…
Who wonster live frevva?
~ ~ ~
between the legs
In the beginning there is God. Or Creative Principle. If we take it that there must be a start and a stop, then there should be some entity to begin with or who/which can make the beginning begin? But we are not there yet so there can be no if. If comes later. Let’s start all over again.
In the beginning there is the Word. (This is plagiarism.) Who writes the Word? Ah! Read for Word a synonym for creative act. You have to leave room for assumptions. If you don’t leave room nothing can be created, not even Nothing. If you leave room for synonyms you have a splitting of cells, procreation, multiplication, a filling of the Void. Where the Void comes from? It is in the nature of the Void neither to come nor to go. And I don’t know who you are. Not yet. Don’t leave the room!
(But if I am it must be because you are, my brother. And since there’s a consciousness conscious of its being in the act of searching for synonyms, it must be an I. If the looking is written down it must emanate from a First Person, even if anonymous, even if produced by the words. The unsayable must be hemmed in. Welcome to the Land of If!)
Now that we have filled some space we can deduce that there is Existence. It would thus be only logical to assume that in the beginning there is/was Potential. How else did we get to the filling of the page?
No Existence without Limitation. In the beginning there are instructions. (Read directives, imperatives, no-go areas, etc.) God is Word or Flesh or some such. It doesn’t really matter. However, since Word is God there will be a fleshing out as the word can only be in becoming. I mean that every word has a double being: the word as such and that which it brings word of. Another word at a pinch. And the sky is the limit.
This goes on for a long time. The sky goes on for a long time but not forever — due to feeble mindsight. The human mind starts all things without being able to see to the end of them. It is called spinning the mind.
Anyway, we shall jump ahead and take it that we already know what we mean when we say First and Day. So, in the beginning there is God who we take to be the Word and all the rest. God has the instructions in word form. Let’s hope he can read. (Who gave him the instructions? Let’s not start all over again!) On the first day he creates firstness and therefore two and the so ons followed by copulation, as also day which calls up night (since otherwise it could not be ‘day’), or the warm hollow for copulation. As the mirror creates the image. The image creates the mirror. Imagine Imago! Imagine I!
In the beginning I had the intention of writing you this so as to introduce you to Story. Do you still doubt? Are you not now reading these words? If you don’t I don’t exist which makes no difference and we have no argument to pursue with one another. If we have no argument we have no way or need to recognize each other and so on back to square none. No Story to sit on your lap, no Flesh to warm with the caresses of Existence. In that case I didn’t write and so there was no I to be manifested.
All of the above I started a long time ago and I now forget what purpose I had in mind. I do see nevertheless that I have just given you a concise explanation of the history of creation. It is because there is creation that I am God continually creating Itself.
God, the One I look at in the black mirror, the Other — is dead. (Creation doesn’t stop with consciousness.) He died of neglect and crass ignorance. People didn’t look after him. To the extent that he might have been no more than an image in People’s mind.
I berate People and tell him he can be had up for non-assistance to a species in danger of extinction. I ask People what he did with God’s corpse. We spirited it away into the earth so as to beef up the subsoil, he says. Does it make the plants grow, I ask. No, the ground in these parts has a weird white taste but there is a sweet-water fountain not far off. People is wont to come here to be reminded that there’s something he ought to remember. Then he has a sip of water and promptly forgets himself in the clear liquid. I tell People not to worry, that there is no sense in thinking about what has been forgotten, that there may have been Nothing to remember in the first place (which naturally sends the mind frantically fumbling for presence), and anyway that the subconscious is quite old enough to take care of itself. I also posit that water is the soul of the mirror.