Swerve
(Followed by 7 drawings illustrating nothing)
Everything I was doing was slowly falling down the crater below. A black circle lacking the concrete joy of magma. And every gesture, performed or to be performed, followed that same direction. The hole was growing with the passing days, and its edge of stone, ground or flesh vanished into smoke.
At night, lying down, there was the sensation of a nail in the spine that went down to the centre of the earth.
My last memory had been at the precise moment of the swerve: the sound of compressed metal, the hair on the tar, the smell of burning skin, the long glow of sand on the rails. I have started to become lighter and entered, unaware, the darkness at noon.
Now that I'm here, what will the inaugural gesture be? Will presentations be necessary?
Like most of those who contemplate me from a distance, in silence, I found my way to here. And we must all have done miraculous things, deserving some reward, even if no criterion had been revealed. I, for example, transported people, countless times did what I was asked to do and learned languages to know how to describe the city (even on the worst days, when I repeatedly thought about the bridge or the silence emanating from the crater). With a sheet in hand, I followed the instructions, performed what was necessary, without giving away the fatigue and the repeated tripping in the corner of the room. Gestures with timing or the right words at the expected moment - I did them all, exactly as I was asked. Sometimes, when facing the mirror, I didn't recognise my own voice.
Now that I'm here, this white light is too strong (inside the houses, where we lived at heights and listened to the furniture being moved, the whisper and the scream were low). I'll have to learn quickly, although time here isn't an issue.
I notice that the overexposed landscape is now changing at a hectic and slow pace. There is a scenery where all singularities and none are simultaneously projected. Although it may seem strange, I don't remember my name, and when remembering other people I remember many overlapping names, as if sounds from a rapturous language. I also don't remember when the machines started to talk and if they actually talked. But I know they gave out some sound. I remember, for example, the sound of the toaster, which emanated the smell of electricity before the bread was eaten, and the circuits that words followed with the tilt of the light. If it was mid-afternoon, the sound would remain until it joined the silence of the birds. At times we knew where we were, even if surrounded by a blue-copper smoke.
Even now, I remember that once I knew the place of everything, but in this arrival, when everyone seems very little concerned about what was once known, now that there is no pressure to entertain the other, to be dominated or dominate, to feign strength and carry out directions, all that had some logic about which meanings arose, everything looks like everything else in the same order of importance. And there is no longer room for a choreography of the before.
The beings that just now were contemplating me from a distance, with a look that was simultaneously deeply familiar and strange, seem to be waiting for some gesture but, at the same time, are immersed in the universe of a game of their own, of contemplation and a rarefied pleasure in the light. They’re moving away now. Slowly they walk out and I remain alone, on one side of the circle. A floorless arena arises and slowly expands. I follow its contour. The beings now disappear in thick fog, rubberlike smoke, entering and becoming themselves part of the smoke. Before long, though, they come out again and effortlessly assemble screens with the thinnest supports, which when raised, join each other, forming a perfect crystal dome, so vast that it would take hours to walk around it. The same light penetrates it, reproduced with the crystal blade, a soft light whose timbre is impossible to replicate. Meanwhile, this dome formed by all the screens begins to be filled by images, some that I recognise, others strange to me. At this moment, the doubt dissipates and the crater of light has no colour, it is day and night at the same time, a transparency that would be possible through the air.
I am suspended faceless in the circle’s centre. All the images, sounds and flickers blend into a sole composition, which makes my body sway, change and assume shapes that, when completed, immediately dissolve to make room for others. It is like a text pressed on a very thin paper sheet, erased by the frequency of light. I see myself from the outside too, from all prisms and perspectives. I inhabit the other figures, we share the same breath, there are no more beings, there is no more I. And suddenly this infinite dome, surrounded by the dance, is undone, and the various points of light come together at a single point.
Right now, an unnameable sound approaches, filling all the void. This sound follows the intensity of the light. At the point where I am, a mouth revolves like the poor executed head of an octopus, taking a new shape through a pair of hands. From here on, as if coal dominated the air, black clouds arise that have the appearance of beings never seen before, moving outward like multiform bubbles of hair, following the repetition of that single sound.
Again I feel the heat in my face or the weight of the bones inside my body.
A hand is resting against one of my temples.
The sound of the siren comes closer,
the hand has a voice that sings and pulsates.
Far away,
a crater that slowly closes.
