Now there is a crowd in S.B.’s living room. Someone is telling — or maybe showing — the story of a young man who begins to levitate, earning the audience’s admiration. But he ends up falling back to the ground (regardless of how gracefully he was floating) and he rushes under a train.
Earlier, I had had a long conversation with her father, and maybe also with her uncle. Both of them were abominably drunk.
No. 91: October 1971
1
25 blows with a stick
I am giving 25 blows with a stick. It’s a performance, which Z. watches without understanding any of it.
For my part, what I understand is something like: from A to Z, where Z is the slash, the cut, the scar.
2
I am in Israel. The country has just gained independence. We wait for a long time in a hangar. Several trucks pass by.
There are two men in me. One is pro-Israel, the other anti-.
The anti- notices that it’s not all for the worst in Israel.
No. 92: October 1971
The actress, 2
An actress begins to dance and slowly takes her clothes off. She has very small breasts.
I think of my mother.
No. 93: October 1971
The snowplow
I have a date with Z. at the Deux-Magots.
It’s snowing.
The snow turns to ice.
Someone brings a snowplow. It emerges from the snow like a submarine’s periscope emerging from the sea.
Details about how the snowplow works.
Another (is it really another?) snowplow flips over.
Z. pays seven and a half francs for our breakfast.
No. 94: October 1971
The inn
I visit J.L., who has just moved and now lives near the outskirts of Paris, across from a métro station. At first glance, the house seems to be just an ordinary building; it’s next to an inn, whose sign says in Gothic letters:
VANVES INN
The apartment is actually a real three-story house (a triplex). The third floor is absolutely amazing. It’s a living room with a grand piano; gradually you realize it’s a very large room, a very, very large room: it goes on forever, its floor is a lawn that opens onto a horizon of wooded countryside.
The view is spectacular. We rave about it:
“What luck that you found this!”
“Too bad they’ll eventually wise up and begin building housing projects on it!”
From the outside, the house looks like a property surrounded by high walls, whose perspectives have been drawn such that no one could imagine an infinite space contained therein.
I move in indefinitely, to this house where many other people also seem to live already.
One day, I meet a girl on the street. She asks if I can put her up for a while. I say yes, without specifying that there’s nowhere for her to stay besides my room (which seems self-evident to me).
The house looks like Dampierre.
Each morning there is an assembly, like for a flag-raising ceremony.
From my window I see S.B. arriving in a car. She raises her eyes to me and smiles (but maybe there’s something dangerous in her smile).
Later: I’m leaving P.’s and going home by way of rue des Écoles. It seems clear to me that I will meet up with a girlfriend who will spend the night.
I do run into many people I know, but they either don’t see me at all, or too late …
No. 95: October 1971
The hypothalamus
It starts with a few harmless comments, but soon there’s no denying it: there are several Es in A Void.
First one, then two, then twenty, then thousands!
I can’t believe my eyes.
I discuss it with Claude.
You might think I’m dreaming.
Look again: no more Es.
Still!
But then again, yes, there’s one, another, two more, and again, tons!
How did nobody ever notice?
Looking at neighbors through binoculars? One has the right to do so, so long as one respects special rules and confines one’s observation to spatiotemporal sequences (as when one plays card games of patience).
I decide (still dreaming) to call this dream “the hypothalamus” because “thus is my desire structured.” I should (in that case) have called it “the limbic system,” which is a more pertinent term for all that refers to emotional behaviors.
No. 96: October 1971
The window
/ /
No. 97: November 1971
The navigators
The stairway
Fantasia
The photos
“You can see me when you want, but know that I don’t need you,” Z. tells me.
There are four of us. We’re coming back in a rowboat on the Seine. Soon it’s just me in the boat.
The river is filled with other navigators.
No. 98: November 1971
Rope
It’s the end of an American comedy. Judy Garland is bewitching her seducer. She runs across the promenade that goes past the Gare du Trocadéro (recognizable by its zoo). It’s 1900. The Eiffel Tower stands in the middle of a large meadow. Nonetheless, there’s an elevator. It’s a “shellevator”; its mechanism is slightly off, causing a small repetitive noise. I wouldn’t want to go up in it. Fortunately, there’s another elevator; it’s a cabin, but I missed the first one.
I get on the second. It’s like a funicular. I feel a friendly pressure on my hand.
At the top. There is an energetic old lady controlling the wire rope. Actually, it’s not a rope that secures us but a very long wooden beam.
We run on the glacier.
Soccer players beneath us cheer for us when we pass by (they’re villagers).
A. falls into my arms.
I see J. again. She’s so happy with the English translation she did of her old friend D.’s play that she’s started one in German with the help of a fat Sachs-Villatte dictionary. I’m pleased for her. She’ll make maybe 2000 marks on the radio, I tell her; how much will she give D.? Just 2 or 300 marks, she replies.
No. 99: November 1971
Resistance
An apartment I almost lived in looks like an apartment Z. had. It’s made up of one large living room and two duplex rooms.
But my apartment is square. I’m there with C. and Lise, and many others.
We’re walking in the street, in the country, we’re running.