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The Doel Bird

Satprem

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The Doel Bird or

The Next Bird on the Earth

Languages, like dinosaurs and our provisional species, are fossilizing, they no

longer utter their cry – and what other cry except what we are? I listened to so

many languages which do not understand themselves or one another, like the

gnawing of the macaques, with a few coordinating conjunctions, and nothing is in

tune. Then I became silent, I forgot my own temporary man, and I heard a great

Wave which embraced the universes and all the little beasts inside them, which

quivered everywhere with a blade of grass, a leaf in the wind, a solitary rock, and

it was that which moved everything, like itself everywhere. Then I saw that my

footsteps, my actions, my words were no longer impulses or thoughts, right or not

right, clear or not clear – they were notes, false or in tune. Like the bird. There is a

sound, a music of being beyond all that we can think of it.

We must learn to be musical, in everything, with everything.

The provisional old man is always making barriers with his ideas (or feelings).

Everything is muddled or convoluted. He no longer knows his own cry.

It will be the next way of being:

a musical way

a music that will cure

all the pains of the earth.

Satprem

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to

my smile

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Why camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth

This ignorant life beneath indifferent skies

Tied like a sacrifice on the altar of Time,

O spirit, O immortal energy,

If ‘twas to nurse grief in a helpless heart

Or with hard tearless eyes await thy doom?

Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death.

Sri Aurobindo

Savitri, VII.2

“A kind of certainty, deep down in Matter, that the solution is THERE... And it

is this, this descent to the very bottom, in search of that marvellous bursting of the

Vibration of Love.”

Mother’s Agenda, October 30 1964

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1

A Blank Page

A blank page.

Empty, null.

As at the beginning of a life, of a world

And what is it?

Like a first child looking at a white beach

Empty, bare.

A gaze

That goes far-far away, where?

It is null, it is empty

and yet, it is.

From what age, what time?

It is null in time

It has no age

There is no step, no trace on that beach

and yet it calls for a step

a something that is not

that beats all the same

in a nothing that is the only something

Like a wave that goes

Far-far away, coming from far

and as always

and that goes away.

There is no where

It is where everywhere

There is no North or South

It is all white, without end

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and yet it begins

a gaze, a wave that goes

that might want something

in that far-far away over there

null

which yet is here

In that gaze, that beating beat

that wave of everywhere which passes

through that null point,

which is perhaps the beat of what is beating

which is perhaps a song

the song of that null gaze

the something that calls for a step and still another

on that white beach.

To walk with that wave, to go with that wave

From nowhere and everywhere

Perhaps to sing with that step into nothing,

To make that nothing be, to make that nothing beat

To make that nothing be born

that null point to the world

which bears that wave all the same

like a sublime song never sung

like a sublime step never stepped

like a bird perhaps

in a first world never lived

then it sings, and it IS

for the first time in the world

and it is miraculous:

it IS.

That point is, and it is everywhere, nowhere,

without North or South

but it is, it sings because it is

and it is all that is

and one walks and walks

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for it to sing again

for that Sublime

to be there and there again

to twinkle like a first star

in that nothing

like the great Music of everything and everywhere

here and there without any note yet

without any word yet

on the great sublime beach of the world

without any second yet in the null time

and it is the first second

that matters from all eternity

and for all ages not yet born.

So was singing the Doel bird

Who did not yet know that he was Doel

or anybody whoever

His song was he, Doel, beating

Fluttering without North or South

it was his dance on the meadow

of no country

It was his sublime second

Coming from the womb of magic worlds

It was without tomorrow

because it was always there

It was without life without death

because it was singing everywhere

with the great wave from here and there

Which turns with stars and fireflies.

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So was beginning a world, a life

A wave, a gaze

A step that dances

into its always-there.

And a Magician was looking on.

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2

Then the Page was no longer Blank

The page was no longer blank.

A Gaze had been laid on the great beach of the world.

Yogmaya the great Magician of the worlds, had looked on and told herself that,

after all, all that white did not appeal to her, did not sing anything to her, except

its great Wave of all times and for all times – time is long without anything in it.

There were no colours in that, nothing that called, nothing that needed Her,

nothing that walked towards Her to say Hello to Her, nothing that danced with her

Wave, nothing that listened to her null Mystery, nothing that groped for that

Mystery that She was to Herself – as if She had never discovered Herself. And

what am I doing in all that and who am I?

So, one day, which was perhaps the first day of the world, She stifled a yawn –

you try to pull a fast one on me, O my eternity of zero, what is the use of being

eternal for nothing?

And the world began to gape like a black hole.

Blackness is really null and black with nothing in it.

And the Magician stifled a sigh, which was perhaps the first breath of the world

– at last, something in that was breathing and sighing... after what? It was perhaps

the first step of the world in its black Mystery.

There was a Mystery in that.

A Mystery for whom, for what? The Magician herself did not know. She was

groping in her sigh for “something” at last, after so many null eternities! She only

knew her great Wave which perhaps hoped for a song. A song for... whom and

what?

Black was really black alone.

So “something” began to swarm and sigh in the night of Times.

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It was... what? Archaeologists or palaeontologists will say it, or entomologists

perhaps – they have become more learned than god or the devil at that time, or the

Great Magician who looked for her song and her notes in her paradise for nothing.

Nothing, all the same, was a hole sighing in a “something” that hoped to get out

of its nullity. And it was perhaps the first hope of the world, its first note in the

great Wave – in the beginning was the Word, say our learned theologians, but at

that time nobody knew anything about conjugations or paradises or hells. And the

Great Magician couldn’t care less about paradises. She wanted simply to sing and

perhaps find her paradise or make it in the end, and many little coloured and

singing unknown notes in her great never-ending Wave.

So was born the word TO BE or TO BE BORN of future grammarians. But is it

really for grammar that a first hope and a first sigh gurgled in that black hole?

Something that wanted to be... what?

A few billion years later, we don’t know it yet, and Yogmaya the great

Magician, feels like yawning again before our wisdom and our science which has

discovered nothing of what sighed and hoped at the bottom of that old black hole.

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3

A Thousand Eyes for Yogmaya

So began to swarm and gurgle a whole swimming and crawling and sliding

world, with small sparkles of moon upon the wave, and a first open-sea music on

the swell, and then all sorts of tiny phosphorescent bugs in the black nothing,

flashes of lightening with tails of silvery fishes, and at times an eel which washed

up on the white beach, squirming as if it sought for another air – already. Or

suddenly, some time afterwards, a pretty, all-black salamander with sunny yellow

spots, and already it breathed in another way as if everybody wanted, tried to be

perpetually different, perhaps thousands and millions of times different with all

possible colours and small leaps here and there, a step and another one under

another skin, and it was always a new thing to discover while hopping and

fluttering from one black rock to another, smelling that air of wrack and green

seaweed. God! How beautiful life was, and Yogmaya was smiling, surrounded by

all those beings that inhabited her great wave, danced with it, were perhaps going

to fly away under the influence of the Charm and vanish into a distance that was

already further, more marvellous to seize, and begin to sing on this note and so

many notes to be discovered, and so many cries to the four winds of the great

wave, from all four corners of the world which were perhaps four thousand, or

billion never-found corners. Cries, because one is completely astounded on that

gaping earth and loves that marvellous nothing that sparkles everywhere and

beckons you.

Then into the forests of the great life came bigger and more voracious beasts,

which perhaps would have liked to swallow up that beauty of being and that

delight of being, it all was as good to eat as one breathes, as one picks up the scent

of pines and moors, as one seizes a lotus or a honeysuckle flower, for nothing, for

the joy of touching and exploring all the senses in a little beast or a big brute

which did not know they had so many senses and sensations in that nameless

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something. And Yogmaya smiled, staring into the distance, always further on as if

she could not stop discovering all her treasure or Mystery. As if she had not

enough eyes to see and to look again and again.

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4

An Enigmatic Smile

What is there farther than the farthest, she wondered?

There are coasts on my sea, but on the other side of the coasts?

But one day in the great forest of the world in which She tired of being

enclosed, always ruminating and thirsty as if no thirst could ever quench her hole

of thirst, no eye could ever twinkle with her own Gaze, from a curious nothing,

She invented and made emerge a strange thing with four legs, a long tail and a

red-tipped nose, which made dancing leaps: a squirrel with curious eyes, which

seemed to look at her with gratitude and sniff the air with delight. Three little

dancing leaps and it disappeared, perhaps too delighted by its own delight. No,

that was not yet it. And why not? To be delighted, was that not good enough?

She looked far-far away into the distance... and she had the impression of

seeing another delight behind, and perhaps others that would no longer be “other”

but like her own magical Gaze which would invent an ever greater Magic at the

bottom of that terrestrial Hole, at the bottom of that Mystery of Herself. That thirst

was perhaps a first drop of love, the first drop that made that creative orgy stream

to find itself at the end?

She looked again, and there was a sort of Smile at the end. But who would say

the end of the universe? If there were an end to the Mystery, it would no longer be

amusing to be lived.

So a strange creature emerged from her question...

Just imagine, it was a monkey with mischievous eyes, many little monkeys

which had two litters a year with a whole harem of female monkeys, which

multiplied at full speed, in various sizes, from big fathers with long, a little too

long, sharp teeth, which could have savoured a whole forest, but always with a

hint of mischievousness and a slightly bumpy skull which seemed to swell over

time, and finally (but where is the end in all that) litters and litters of mischief,

smaller in size but as mischievous as ever, with a gnashing of teeth slightly

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enraged because they did not know what was beneath that fur: capuchins,

marmosets, baboons – really, the great Magician never tired of inventing her

bizarre and curious Mystery, and then again those annoying, thieving macaques,

which were not shy about looking at you in the eye with mischief behind and

more articulated and strident gnashing of teeth – and a sort of aggressive question,

ready to jump on you at the slightest inattention. Their bump was perhaps less of a

hump, but others had a thinner one like the top of an Eiffel Tower in preparation

or of a sacristan who would soon become a canon, but a question all the same that

they did not cease to chew and chew on again in all tropics: what is it that lies

under that yellow, black or dark brown fur on some coast of unperturbed azure?

Thus were our ancestors born who were not Gallic. We left our tail behind and

put on a democratic and colourful necktie after tiresome or tired centuries, but did

not lose our old habits.

So was born the tediousness of being always the same in one tropic or another

and up to the pointed peak of Spitzberg under its ice cap.

It was perhaps the first question of one of those mischievous ex-macaques,

provided with timepieces that continually counted the same hours.

And Yogmaya smiled enigmatically.

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5

The Magician and the Miscreant

And one day, in that crowd of hurried apprentice men who no longer climbed

trees, there was a young good-for-nothing (that was how some wise father

macaque labelled him), an unbeliever in all the gods of the macaques but who saw

all their devils, and paradises that were always the same and always false, who

ruminated on one of those endless boulevards, telling himself: “Since I am good

for nothing, well, I am ready for anything.” It was all well and good, but

“anything”, what was that? It made a hole in his heart and he felt a little lost

amidst all those perpetual men running about with their birth, baptismal and

residence certificates in their pockets – birth to what? – and the next Master of

Arts, Science, Law and I don’t know what, Master of Geography, but what

geography and what law? Then retirement in the end and the little family and all-

risk insurance, but what is there to risk when you have nothing except a hole in

your heart and in your pockets? The “future” of what? He had two legs, his only

belongings; his home was under a bridge. And his empty question.

But one day, under his bridge, as he was staring at an old plane tree which

trembled in the wind, his hole was such a hole that it was unbearable, it was like a

wound of nothing, for nothing, he was born to what, for what, perhaps he had

never been born except on a certificate. His wound was perhaps his only birth

certificate.

One is born with a wound, but damn it! Why? Where does it come from? From

what marmoset lost in its old world?

Or from what unknown being in the forest of the future?

He put his head in his hands, his suffocating black hole made such a call for air

that the plane tree began to tremble even harder as if its thousands of leaves were

whispering. And Yogmaya, the great Magician, looked at him with a powerful

smile: “At last, here is someone who needs me!”... They all needed this and that

and they roamed the streets to catch the thousand needs of their ready-made future

and the thousand corners of their all mapped-out geography, with its thousands of

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latitudes and longitudes made to measure to the last millimetre... There was

nothing left to discover. What have I to say in all that and who calls for me, on

what empty wave? Even their genetic salvation is counted and numbered with its

thousands of letters that it is enough to put in order to ensure you a future without

cancer, without illnesses, without questions, and perhaps you will live two

hundred or two thousand years of a prescribed and perfectly coded life. The

immortality of macaques is in sight, with a few more improvements.

Damn it!

And it was Yogmaya who answered that good-for-nothing through a thousand

shivering leaves that made music like an open-sea on no known wave.

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6

In the Forest of the Future

As he had nothing but his two legs, he took the right and the left, pushed by I

don’t know what whisper of an old plane tree, which made an open-sea music in

his man’s hole. He walked in a nothing that was carried by some thirst for I don’t

know what – a miracle that would change everything and kindle a fire in that

deserted and well mapped-out continent, which would perhaps kindle a music

among that gnashing of sated macaques. He was hungry, thirsty for a nothing that

would perhaps become a “something” at last, like an old rock under the quick-

sands of those never-ending ages.

He walked for a long time, was it for years or centuries? – he had lost his

clockwork, he had lost his North, his South, he had lost everything, as he had

never had anything, and yet there was an old memory in the depths which was like

a breath, a wave, a music from an over-there that would be here under his feet all

the same and that called him back or called him from a forgotten and yet already

known world.

There were cacti along the roadsides, there were aloes and bamboos, and also

nomads who spoke I don’t know what language, but who understood one another

very well through large starving eyes which looked at the trail over there, that

other trail. One day, he saw one of them take a young bamboo, make a hole in it

and another hole and small holes, and he blew into it since it was the only

instrument he had, and it made silly little notes that made sense anyway, maybe

like a bird. It was the first language of the world, its first breath coming out of

nothing, which wanted to sing its heartbeat in spite of everything, its joy of being

there under a big sun of fire slowly going out on the forest with a thousand shades

of tenderness, as if something was loving in that and wanted to love everything

for nothing, simply because that is, and to say it in all the languages of a great

world, and make a lot of little notes of all colours which understood one another

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very well and perhaps remembered the same unknown and yet well known world

at the bottom of a first heartbeat, in the depths of an ancient lost forest.

One step and then another, he walked for a long time through the same thirst

that sought its Nile, its Ganges, its great River forever, that which flows and flows

through so many lost ages, so many lost men who sought their Goal all the same,

through Black and White, No and Yes, and so many detours which did not know

their course but walked all the same, and it was all carried by the same Music

which did not know itself and made so much noise and cries and tears and fleeting

joys, to start again on the same Trail, always. There was no metaphysics there, but

pure physics, bleeding, wounded, praying without any prayer, except a ray of

tenderness, in the evening at sunset, a moment among those thousands of

moments for nothing. Would there never be a Moment among all those ages,

those walks for nothing? A tenderness, a Beauty that would light up forever with a

yet unborn Ray.

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7

The Gentle Monk, the Musician and the Lost Beauty

And one day, he arrived in a deep gorge at the end of the forest, surrounded by

bare, rocky, stony mountains, like a womb of the earth turned towards the sky. At

the very edge of that precipice, there was a sort of fortress or temple or monastery.

A high bastion of huge rocks, carefully carved with a few arches or vaults looking

further away to some lost summit in the distance, towards a further away that was

never far enough. He climbed barefoot with his nose facing the wind and his same

thirst for a nothing which was the only “something” in all that, with the wind

blowing a mute music of a Far away that never said its song. Anyway, he had his

flute under his arm, which he had decorated with the husk of a watermelon, like a

drum or a sound box that sounded nowhere except in his heart.

A smiling monk opened the gate of that wild fortress. It was obviously Buddhist

and silent like some frozen eternity with a few notes of a whistling wind that

seemed to give an even more distant eternity to the quiet bareness. He was

immediately taken to the master of the house through icy stone corridors which

reminded him of old prisons, disappeared and forgotten but suddenly

remembered, where he had walked in the cloth of a man sentenced to death, with a

prayer for nothing, or for another time that would not be the same death: perhaps

that was his music in the depths and his hole of thirst or his nameless wound.

Anyway, nobody there asked him his name or his country, as if it did not matter at

all: one was Tom or Dick or what’s-his-name on some lost planet among the stars.

He had come from under a bridge on the bank of a River flowing forever near an

old whispering plane-tree.

Monks were not so much his taste, and to meditate about what? The “far” was

so far away. He would have liked a far away right here with its wind of music.

That monk had a funny little cap on his head. He was sitting on the ground behind

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a small wooden desk. He looked at him and that gaze went very deep down inside,

as if touching the same gaze in him, as a brother touches a brother with an

understanding smile, as if they already knew each other, and something opened in

his heart like a flower touching its identical sun. He let himself flow into that

living silence and the nomadic good-for-nothing felt something move in there at

last. The cap nodded and looked at that strange flute, they had no language to

understand each other but it was understood anyway, and he put his flute on his

knees, took his cheeks between his hands, and his hands said that he felt like

sleeping – sleeping as if for centuries.

Immediately, he was taken to a tiny, icy cell where he slept and slept as if for

the first time in his life, after centuries of tiredness. Somebody covered his body

with a blanket without him noticing it.

And he dreamt.

The next morning, or a few mornings later, just before awakening, he had a

long dream. He was in an immense forest where there was a beautiful, such a

beautiful girl, with long, slightly golden hair. She was wandering here and there as

if she were lost, oh! He immediately fell in love with that Beauty, and he needed

to find her again at any cost, but how? Which way?

The next day, or some centuries after that night, he again wanted to see the

gentle cap that seemed to understand so many things about that good-for-nothing.

The same smile welcomed him and looked at him again and told him in that

language that was devoid of words but breathed like the leaves of the plane-tree

on the bank of his old River: “Yes, I know, she was very beautiful, she was the

great Goddess of Beauty, and there was a musician of old who tried to charm her,

but he was not pure, he wanted to take her as his wife, so she turned to stone and

since that time she wanders in the great forest, looking for what she was. But the

world had lost its Queen of Beauty and it entered a great Night for centuries,

during which it produced all sorts of monsters. So, go and seek Her who will give

back its Beauty to the world and create its new child among the old beasts which

devour the earth.”

Then, he added dreamily:

– But be very careful, it is dangerous: if you want to release that Beauty, you

might turn to stone.

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So he spoke and our nomad came down from his fortress of eternity into the

great forest of the Future.

He had forgotten his flute there.

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8

In Search of the Great Goddess in the Stone

He walked for a long time, was it for years or centuries, in that forest that

cradled him with its thousands of quivering leaves sounding like a great Wave,

calling further, always further away, which carried him in a great forgotten and

remembered tenderness, with a cry sometimes like that of his friend, the bird of all

times. And what was he seeking? A step and yet another as if everything were

THERE, immediately THERE under his feet, and what was there to seek?

And then, sometimes, a sudden black hole in an incomprehensible present, as

under his old bridge on the edge of the River under a hopeless latitude, and again

the question of... What? Who? What is it? In a nothing not yet born. And he had to

walk and walk in order to be born. Born to what? And it was the old forgotten and

returned wound.

He had forgotten his flute up there...

That fortress of eternity —, what is the use of it if it does not sing? And his

friend, the bird of the migratory centuries, let out a little cry as if it understood

very well, then it flew away – to sing for whom? And yet that feels like singing.

There is a forgotten flute up there. There is perhaps a forgotten Music up there,

which would like to be heard again.

She was so beautiful! The one he had seen that night, he had tried to charm her

with some flute of old, but she turned to stone, said that gentle monk who seemed

to read the past and perhaps all times in his eternity forever – but what good is

Time if it is not to be filled with a Beauty that would be its song, its life? A life

that would not end for nothing, that would not be a death which still runs on for

some time. Where is my Queen of Beauty spell-turned into a stone? “Go and seek

Her who will give back its Beauty to the world and will create its new child.”

And the great forest unfolded its mystery through thousands and thousands of

quivering leaves.

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He had to be born, at last, born to something that was not yet born! In the

millions of years of time, there must be surprises that those trained macaques do

not expect, one must go and meet the next surprise!

Or what?

There was a little torrent cascading towards its River, which sought many little

arms to embrace it in its flow. He had listened to so many rivers here and there; he

knew its language, the smooth murmur that carried it towards other drops and

others still, towards thirsty deserts. And there was a big hairy bear there, which

lapped up its drops with delight, then it lifted its nose in the trembling air to sniff

that unknown smell, but it was She! His little she-bear of all times, they knew

each other very well, and he threw himself on her muzzle to sniff and sniff again

that delightful and enchanted smell, as if they had found each other again and

found their sniffing and grunting together, and they waddled and gently nodded as

if life had always been that dance together.

Our nomad of times to come listened and listened to that old River that glided

and grew, carried away by its unknown source, its first enchanted drop which had

made its first music in order to find its innumerable enchantment in a small root, a

seed of convolvulus or the tongue of a bear and so many thirsty little tongues

which looked for their delight and their joy.

And that musician of old had wanted to charm his Queen or his princess, to

keep her a moment in that Time fleeting like the great River, to take her for him

and forever, and She turned to stone – and he had to free her. And perhaps that

was the old wound that called him and made him thirsty in order to be healed

forever of that unhappy and grating species where he had been born in the

aberration of one moment among those centuries that had flown with the Nile or

the Ganges or the Tista of that deep gorge overlooked by a fortress of eternity.

But his princess of Beauty, where was she among the rocks which murmured

with the little torrent? And he listened and listened to those stones which seemed

to have a tongue, too, and a thirst, too, perhaps for melting to find again its source

and its great Wave and its River that beaded its enchanted drops.

His Princess was perhaps at the bottom of the rock?

“Go and seek Her who will free the world from its night and from the old beasts

that devour the earth”.

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So, one day, he reached the end of a clearing at the end of a rocky hill in the

forest, a green meadow, tender like daylight at last after so many nights: a red

poinsettia which quivered in the wind, and there was an old abandoned house,

with a small portico and three steps from which one could look far, far away. As if

that house had been made for him and found again by him, as if it had been

waiting for him from olden times, since lost and forgotten deaths.

And his friend the bird was there.

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9

The Doel Bird

and Nil the Miscreant

So, one day in the country of men, in a well-controlled and timed geography in

which only a few decades counted with death at the end, and everything died

because everything counted and counted, even kilometres and the light of no sky,

even stars with a chronometer, and nothing sang and danced except doel birds

because they had time to spare, even they were classified as passerines in the

thousand catalogues of the thousand clever species which did not yet know that

they were clever – we were the only stupid species that did not know how stupid it

was, we were the kings of this country and that country, while kilometres and

hours of flight separated that “this” from that “that”, and everything was separated

because the great wave did not sing anymore to embrace its whole world in its

always-there. There were frontiers, white and yellow and black dotted lines which

dotted no light, no star, nothing was sublime anymore except madmen,

sometimes, at a lost minute, and even madmen were quickly branded and locked

up while the clever kings did not know their own frontiers or their Prison under

their noses. Anyway, there were no longer noses anywhere, there were gas masks

and Geiger counters to count our alpha particles and our atomic number – but

there was no heart or core anymore, no centre anywhere because the great wave

did not go through that anymore except like a thief, it no longer embraced its great

miraculous world everywhere-there, immediately there. We had invented so many

laws that we had made ourselves outlaws of the universe: there was no room

anymore for the sublime, the miracle, the great Music that holds everything in its

Note. We were inside our clever and deaf frontier, so we needed much noise to

understand one another, we were in our mortal, padlocked and suffocating

geography, and everything died because everything counted death – it was legal

and decreed, except for a doel bird which danced on its meadow of no country and

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sang for nothing, sang because IT IS, to make that miraculous nothing be born,

that null point which nonetheless carries a wave.

But that day, in the country of geographied, counted and suffocating men, there

was a miscreant, very young, seventeen or seventeen thousand years old, a heretic

to frontiers and homelands, he was from a not yet born homeland which even he

did not know, his homeland was that empty or null second that knew it was

beating and breathing, and to breathe was that Note that was not aware of itself

but danced or did not dance, and “not” was not possible, it was the very

impossible that dropped dead when thought under one skull or another – “no” was

no to everything except to That, that only Note that went through this body again

and again and walked with his steps and turned and returned through this

immensity of embracing and beating and always new Wave, like the meadow

quivering unknowingly under the great wind of no pole but of the great pole

everywhere which sings through that point of music and all points of the endless

great world which stipple together, know one another together, love one another

together immediately there-everywhere in an only great Music which was the

heart of the worlds and the innumerable core of everything and everyone. And

there was no you and I but a single Choir, a chord that called itself and answered

itself, and everything called... without knowing what but it made a step and

another one, as if to make quiver that sprig of lavender or of fennel, to make what

is there like an always new Miracle be more and more, more and more there, and

which would want... What? And which can do everything because it is “that” that

wants everywhere, in one second as in all eternity, that that breathes, that that

loves because it is the only thing that loves everywhere, in that bit of a man and

that stone and that fern or that silver plane-tree quivering in the wind and that

grain of rain shining at the end of a leaf like a sudden diamond.

But that miscreant named Nil, because he was null and blue like a little duck or

the creeks of a Belle-Île1 – Nil was the sound that curls and calls with the wave,

an eternal little surf that calls and calls... Where? One does not know, but it is

what sings and carries the song and makes the song increase. That Nil of nothing

and from nowhere or from everywhere loved the Doel bird above all, his close

friend in the great closeness of the worlds – perhaps he remembered he had been a

bird in other countries of here or there?... A man on two legs with a skull, it is a 1 An island in Brittany, France.

27

skull too many, and two legs so heavy, perhaps it was the remnant of monkeys?

But his friend the doel bird was always new and dancing and wagging its tail as if

to catch... What? The end of the universe or of the never-ending song or the beetle

fleeing to the end of the star.

And at the very end, it was love, more and more. And the vanished green beetle,

it was a thousand beetles returned into the great Song and coming back.

But night fell on the meadow, the sky was illuminated by a pink shade and huge

white giants which became large wings and little gods here and there, blinking for

a little Nil staring on his two legs, and for the two amazed and astounded eyes of a

little doel bird on the hill. That little Doel bird was so astounded in front of his

brother Nil’s room, on the windowsill against the magical windowpane which

reflected a whole pink sky with its little gods and the red leaves of the poinsettia

under the window, inside the window, there, with the azalea bush and... Another

little doel bird, like itself, and so gentle and quivering with the wind of the

meadow. So it began to call and call, and knock and knock at the windowpane to

touch it with its beak, perhaps to kiss it. Nil was looking on and on, and the doel

bird knocked and knocked, it could not believe its eyes – each time it was there,

hard and black and null, its magical friend eluded it, flew away... Where to? Into a

strange black-null, nonexistent, or existing for whom? So it began again to call

and call with all its evening song for the fleeing sun, for that vanished little Doel

she-bird, and it knocked again and again perhaps to kiss its companion, its

magical love of all times.

Then it fell on the windowsill, exhausted and disconsolate like the first mortal

grief in the world. Nil, softly, so softly, took that little warm and quivering thing.

There was a tiny bit of very white fluff under that quivering black tail, like bark in

winter. It uttered a cry, like a first cry of lost love, and opened its wings. There

were two white lines, all white like the first snows under those black wings. And

it flew to the poinsettia, there, just under Nil’s window, but it could not

comprehend this, where was its friend, its love, there, hidden behind that hard

thing that told a whole golden sky and a changing meadow where still quivered a

sprig of lavender and a pretty yellow clover.

Then the Doel came back, again and again, with a cry, a song for its lost love of

all times, and it knocked and knocked to kiss its magical shadow. And it dropped

dead at the bottom of the window wall.

28

Nil came. Softly, so softly, he picked up that warm little thing that no longer

quivered.

Then Nil shed a tear, as for the first pain of the worlds, in that great Song

pierced by a shadow.

29

10

Yogmaya

the Magician

Nil remained seated for a long time on his stairs in front of his empty meadow,

his green island for nobody, his wild island.

He had lived so many islands and white beaches where no trace was left except

a trace of the same pain, except the same wild No in the end.

He had no tears left, all that was over.

He entered a Silence.

A frightening and null Silence, like an old nameless cataclysm, like a terrible

question without words. It was stuffed with an inexplicable beating like his only

self at the end of everything, his sole music without notes, like a very old

backwash still making the only thing that exists in that nothingness – a sort of

deep-deep cry beyond all cries. Perhaps like a call, for nothing and nobody. He,

the old miscreant of so many lost worlds, for nothing – or for what?

A black and null Silence like old lightning that never burst, like a poignancy

never pointed at any dawn. Like stone.

He was that point, that gaze into the nothing still beating on an island that had

been green.

For a moment, everything stopped.

It was yes or it was no.

Then She appeared.

She was as beautiful as nothing is beautiful in the world, like living Love, like

the only thing that made the worlds beat, that made that first cry inside nothing,

that made that first step on a white beach, as if one had to be and be again in that

beating, to be only in that Beauty of being there in that something that loves, that

30

surf of love rolling with the first stars and which would like to be again and again,

innumerably and everywhere itself.

Nil looked up in his Silence, suddenly broken apart by white lightning. She was

there, just before his azalea bush, she had a long gown of white light, she was

smiling – was she young, old? She was timeless, with long, slightly golden white

hair, and was leaning a little towards him.

– What are you looking for? She asked with that voice that was like the very

Music of the worlds and the surf of all the beaches of the world and the great

wave which makes the universes sing and a little doel bird on a bare beach.

– Well, say it! And it will be.

– I am looking for a smile.

She looked into the infinite of Time.

– Well, knock and knock at the white window pane.

So She spoke and disappeared.

She was Yogmaya. So she was called long ago:

The Great Mother

She who discloses

the illusion

and

if you want

She who reveals reality

31

11

The Gaze of the Pharaoh

He remained seated on his steps in front of the azalea bush.

Nothing. As one who falls from another planet.

But this planet, our planet... or so it seems?

He looked at the big, gigantic white clouds of the monsoon which slowly

disintegrated, scattered, trickled away, and then opened up again like bird wings

or small white hands. At times, everything took on a pink glow, then it melted into

the blue.

“Knock and knock at the white window-pane”, she had said.

Did she jest?

In order to make a little body without cries on a windowsill?

For a moment, still astounded, he turned around on his steps to look at the white

window. Yes, there was a shadowy little man, there, young or old, seventeen or

seventeen thousand years old, along with the red and quivering leaves of the

poinsettia and the little yellow clover in the meadow, more living that that double

of shadow without a smile or a song, except, perhaps, a held-back cry which

would have liked to call I don’t know what, behind that black hole.

And his Doel bird, what did it call? What did it embrace and embrace in vain?

While the meadow still shivered, so beautiful because it was alive with its own

beauty. But did the Doel bird know that it was so beautiful and singing? Perhaps

there was no gaze to show it its own beauty, or any soft and tender voice to tell

him: keep on singing for me?

And he, Nil? Nil, what?

He turned round once again to look through his window, like a clever seventeen

or seventeen thousand year old idiot who knows very well that...

... that what?

Then he closed his eyes.

32

He closed his eyes, there, on those steps of grey granite, seated there for

centuries of a song so mixed with pain and with the same poignancy, as in front of

a wall which might be from Thebes on the edge of a flowing river, which might

be from a cliff on the side of a roaring sea, a wide-open gap into nothing which

would be the only beating thing, thousands of lives that were the same death near

a singing bird, near a face closed on a smile, then you take to the road again and

again, naked and dressed in a song, alone and crowded with a call that would be

the call of all human beings, with a no, a yes that would be hope anyway, and it

was so poignant, so dense, like the man sentenced to death who still calls his

mother, who beats and beats that last second like an eternity of love for nothing

that would like to continue singing as if death did not exist and if those living

people did not exist, or did not exist yet, already dead without having uttered their

sublime cry which would make the Walls and all the tombs collapse.

He, Nil the miscreant, seated on those steps of irreducible granite which had not

descended yet towards their Lethe of oblivion, but the oblivion was never

forgotten, it was inscribed, engraved on a granite harder than those steps, on a first

rock of the worlds which kept its not-yet-born secret.

He, Nil, wanted that Secret and no fuss, he was at the end of the roads, at the

end of the islands, whether white or green or red, at the end of all the dead not yet

born and the smiles so quickly closed again. He was such a dense gaze at nothing,

such an intensity of being never born in any flower of love, so dense that he was

there, frozen on those steps, like an immobile block of stone, like an old pharaoh

with eyes closed who looks at the ruins of his eternal empire.

Then, suddenly, something cracked there, like a hole in reverse which would

not sink into a tomb anymore; like a magic push which burst those mortal

centuries closed in a man’s skull, and he emerged into the open air.

All-all his being like a block of BEING began to rise and rise, cell by cell,

nerve by nerve, second by second, from the tips of the toes, everything went out

of the body as when one dies, as if springing from under the feet, from an

unfathomable abyss never fathomed, suddenly pierced, and it was he, Nil from

nowhere, who was pierced through, and it went up and up solidly, second by

second, indefinitely, as if it never stopped going out from that bottomless abyss,

33

as if all the atoms of the earth were beginning to blossom in a tremendous

ascending breathing, sucked in, pulled from their mortal night by an invisible

triumphing Sun which was their source, their very beating, their Delight like an

irresistible liberated sap which went up through all its fibres, its leaves, its

centuries and millions of rootlets to touch that, breathe that, find that again, its lost

infinitude, its great solar wave imprisoned in a tomb, that little note never sung in

the great song of the universes.

A new world was beginning through a point.

And then… a marvelous blossoming happened.

That interminable ascent, solid, uninterrupted, as if an entire tree were going

through its centuries of aspiration, as if a whole mortal being were uprooting its

innumerable deaths, and perhaps all the death of the earth through a tiny rootlet

innumerably communicating with the old tree of a dying world, that endless

breaking through of a null and annulled little man, suddenly unfurled, spread out,

immensely deployed like a drop meeting its ocean, like an emptiness, empty for

such a long a time, finds its Fullness again, a luminous sea, so soft, like a first

Mother in the world in her breast of tenderness from before the births, before the

songs that end in tears, before the smiles that fade, the pharaohs meditating on

their ruins in the pink dusk of the desert – it was the immense Silence of before

our cries, before our pinks and our reds or blues that end in black, it was huge

arms which embrace everything, soothe everything, erase all the wounds of the

world and one could sink there cured forever into that silent and soft sea as if

there had never been anything other than that boundless Love above the worlds,

deaths, sorrows and the little things that keep on crawling and flying and

struggling... and for what?

He was about to disappear there.

But there was still something, in the depths of the abyss, that pulled, called, like

a sublime Sorrow which wanted its flower, too, a sublime cry that wanted its

song, too, and forever, a bottomless Abyss, a nameless terrestrial hole which

looked for its green meadow, a never-found Secret which knocked and knocked to

34

find the being behind its shadow, the She-Doel bird forever which would make its

song sing and look at its beauty through immortal eyes.

Then there was that sublime human Cry on the edge of a little window, on the

edge of an old dead man who was going to die again on his steps without having

walked all the way, without having found his Smile forever or unravelled the

Enigma that that old Pharaoh with closed eyes was looking at in the pink dusk of

the desert.

Then everything stopped.

The soft and infinite seas closed again, the deliverance, the Peace that erases all

pains closed its doors on that mortal cry, and...

It seemed to him that he was hearing the voice of the Great Mother:

– You passed the test of the paradise of the dead.

And a terrible reversal happened.

35

12

The Reversal

Tides reverse but it is always the same sea with its equinoxes and its smooth or

seething, narrowing or abrupt passes. But that sea, that reversal...?

Like two worlds reversing into one and it is another world, and yet the only

world that ever existed before all births and all songs, and our pains, and it is

another Law from before our laws and our mortal and unfortunate bodies, and it is

another music, and yet the sole Music that made those millions of bodies and

billions of atoms beat, more innumerable than all the sands of all seas. That which

makes all beatings beat, whether happy or unhappy, and nobody is happy because

nobody is what he or she IS, engulfed and walled-up in that Abyss of stone, there,

under our feet, and our wings which never opened and flew, light and forever. We

have not been born yet, we are not our song yet. We are that black Abyss looking

for its meadow, we are that death that tries to live.

And suddenly, that Life blooms, that Night and those billions of atoms reach

their great free air and their Sun of all times, like two worlds finding each other

again after ages of oblivion, and it is one world with its Sun of below as well as its

Sky above, with its innumerable songs of abysses as well as its great Music of the

universes. The same Earth, pierced through, and it is another earth, two opposite

poles which have never been opposite and melt into a Star of all stars, and it is the

same Point of all points that stipple their sole star at last, a million mute voices

that sing their ultimate chord, a million walled-up atoms which waited for their

Note from above to sound and resonate everywhere.

A new universe was opening on one point.

A difficult, impossible point.

The doors of the blissful disappearance had closed again on that Cry from

below, that call of a million pains ascending second by second from the tips of the

36

toes like a solid flow through a little man, Nil and null, an old bruised tree that

never ended uprooting its Night from the night of the earth to meet its sun, make

its thirst of a million vain years burst, a hole at last in that old death that never

ended dying. It was so solid that it was going to burst on one side or the other.

It was yes, or it was No forever.

Then Yogmaya came, the Great Mother. Without a word, She touched that No

of the earth to the delivering and blissful seas. She touched that same no of a man

to the old death and... In a smile, everything reversed in a tremendous flow, the

same flow that wanted its Yes forever, its Song forever everywhere in a million

points which were Herself.

Slowly-slowly and drop by drop, that tremendous flow, that cataclysmic,

crushing cataract began to descend through that pierced little man, descend and

descend endlessly, irresistibly, implacably, until it touched that desperate man

down to the tips of his toes, that miscreant hoping for a sole hope, that man crying

out or that believer of a True Life at last on earth and in a living body behind that

double of shadow.

Then, in that nil and null little point, seated there on those steps, immobile and

stiff like a statue with closed eyes looking at the old desert of centuries in the pink

dusk, a little note began to sing.

And he opened his eyes.

37

13

A Smile

For a long time, he remained immobile on his steps in a silence of before the

worlds, he looked on without seeing, that pure gaze that was a call, or an eternity

looking at itself, infinite and white, and which would perhaps like to be filled with

something, an unknown to become and which does not know itself like the giant

white clouds of the monsoon which were going to scatter, to disperse like notes of

snow on the changing old earth.

A tiny orange and pink hummingbird, almost golden, with two little grey wings,

landed in the earthen cup under the amaryllis and took a bath, oh! With what

delight it dived and shook its golden wings, shook this tiny rain of fresh and very

new joy and dived again and again to savour that delight, then flew away with a

cry.

Slowly, that Nil and Null was finding his memory again, that old gaze of the

immense Times which called their still unborn joy, their cry of being again and

again in that vast world, that mystery to itself.

He wanted to move that mass that he was, that kind of crushing or crushed thing

regaining its gravity, that solid and lightning-fast Breath which flew and flew

through that body of stone, reluctant like all the little pebbles of the world, that

old rock, pierced down to the end of its feet by that unknown Air, so dense and

light and lightning-fast, which sank under those feet into that old earth, that abyss

as immense as the earth itself, and each second of that impossible breathing

pounded and pounded imperiously, irresistibly, massively, as if it wanted to

become possible and more and more in those millions of bruised fibres and nerves

and coagulated atoms, as if that form of Nil were going to burst into... what?

Another unknown being. He was pounded and pounded with every second of

breathing, and he had to breathe in that or die, and at each second it was yes and

yes again as the only possible thing in the world, like the first cry of a first baby of

that unknown earth, impossible but the only real thing in the world.

38

There was that amaryllis, that azalea, the meadow quivering in the wind. He

stood up and almost toppled backwards, he had to lift that mass that was him or I

don’t know what. He climbed down the last step, he wanted to touch that new and

fresh meadow, touch that quivering and living thing, he would have liked to

embrace it. He took a first step, then another. It was strange, it was an unsteady

body, as if drunk, which swayed to the right, swayed to the left, a little quivering

and uncertain like the meadow in the wind, but so heavy, like an old chimpanzee

on two legs too many.

He turned around to find his safe stairs, he saw his window, his white window

panes, and a small ridiculous shadow looking at him. He opened his mouth and...

God knows! A smile was looking at him.

39

14

The Wild Prince

and his Doella

He turned around abruptly.

Once again, he nearly lost his balance on that strange moving earth.

There was that reality, there, in front of him, near the azalea bush.

A smile looking at him.

Two eyes blinking a little in their split smile, as if surprised, a round pink face,

quite new, like the delight of the hummingbird, and that long tunic rolled up to the

knees, orangey and sunny in the rising sun. Nil remained there, silent and amazed

in the presence of that Reality which seemed more real than the meadow itself.

She held a small straw basket in her hand, she stood very straight and motionless,

like smiling centuries looking on. He plunged into that gaze like the little

hummingbird into its fresh water – it was so new and yet so well-known like old

bottomless centuries that meet again at their source. She had two brown plaits

with coppery glints on her shoulders. She made a little gesture with her hands, as

if to go towards him.

– But... where do you come from?

Nil was at a loss for words, he did not want to dream again. Or was it Reality

that wanted to dream... with him?

She smiled again, so lightly, and her lips moved on wordless words which

wanted to bead the meadow of that morning with the softness of their dew.

– Who brought you here?

She took a step towards him, opened her straw basket as if looking for

something... Then she said quietly, with some small emotion which rustled like

the caress of the morning on the first leaves:

– I was looking for...

40

The first drops of the monsoon began to run down the azalea bush, on the very

spot where Yogmaya, the great Mother, had told him: “Knock and knock at the

white windowpane and that will be”.

– I was looking for wild berries in the forest, then I slept, then I came here.

She took a handful of small red berries in her basket.

– And who are you?

– I don’t know.

– You don’t know! But you are my wild prince! So I followed the little torrent

that flows from your trees and I came up here.

She opened her hands, slender, long, pink hands, and held out to him three, only

three seeds of naga.

– And what are you looking for?

– I don’t know.

She opened her mouth, struck with amazement.

The large heavy drops of the monsoon began to beat the tall eucalyptus trees

and the azalea bush.

– Come up the stairs, under the portico.

– But rain is so good!

He took the three red seeds and that hand, as soft and warm as the throat of his

friend the bird.

– You are my Doella.

And the monsoon poured down like a cataract.

41

15

Another Being on the Earth

– Well... The earth is happy.

With a slight move of her head, she pushed back her braids on her neck.

– Why do you live up so high?

He remained silent for a moment.

– I don’t want their teeming men, they are ugly. I don’t want their laws. Or their

good or their worse or their borders. Nothing sings in their hearts any more.

– Yes, they are mechanical men.

And the silence sunk into the joy of the pierced clouds.

It was such a soft silence near her, as if one could smell in it the scent of the

forest through its thousand holes of thirst, its millions of dishevelled leaves. One

sank there through singing centuries which smelled the joy of growing and the

splendour of being everywhere in the roundness of a breathing and beating earth.

It was full of a love that grew in its own love of being there and there again and

ever more, without beginning or end – it began at each second which could have

been centuries because it had nothing to do but to bathe there like the little

hummingbird in its ocean of delight, and let the Marvel do its own marvelling...

for no gaze, or perhaps the same gaze everywhere. A silence near her which flew,

bottomless, as in an immense ageless Memory which contained all ages.

There were pains, too... later.

– And you, little princess, where do you live, where do you come from?

She turned her head suddenly... towards nothing, and it was something, which

darted past three minutes later, coming from the smell of the resin of the large

cypress tree, with a little red mischievous nose and a long tail: three short dancing

leaps.

– You see, it is our Malabar squirrel. I have always lived in the forest, I live in

an old song which whispers with the trees and repeats itself in spring with the cry

of the hoopoe and the egret in the pond. I had parents of men long, so long ago, a

father, a mother vanished on the other side of the worlds, who looked for I don’t

42

know what when everything was there under their noses and right before their

eyes, in the smell of a squirrel or the song of the blue blackbird. They saw

nothing, heard nothing. There was a musician, too. I have forgotten, it was so long

ago and it is as if very new in your eyes. I picked those wild berries for you and I

did not know it, and I had always known it.

She put a whole handful of wild berries in his hand.

– There, that is for you. And what are you looking for in front of your eyes and

in your heart, don’t you see?

– I was born in the pains that came afterwards. In those blind and deaf men who

only hear the echo of their own walls and the noise of their machines, those

forgetful of their great song. I seek... Ah! I seek another being on the earth after

those ignorant madmen, after that murderous and mortal species.

– Well, pound and pound in your body as does the monsoon on this earth. And

it WILL BE.

– Without you, nothing is, only more pain and gentle doel birds dying on the

edge of their own reflection – you are my she-doel bird forever and my princess of

the New world.

– Well, it will be.

– Together.

– Together.

The same voice as Yogmaya’s. Was she her daughter?

And before he knew it, she had disappeared the same way as the squirrel.

43

16

The Pharaoh’s Wrappings

For a long time yet he remained there breathing the smell of forest which had

come with her, like long green centuries rising towards their source, long dripping

and loving ferns. Now he knew: he had only to call “Doel bird, Doel bird!” and

there she would be, it was not on the other side of any reflection, any magic or

illusion, it was there, without death or heaven, it was perhaps the very Magic that

carries the universes in their great wave – death was Illusion itself: “Do you want

reality or do you want illusion? Yogmaya had said, the Great Mother of our

unknown Magic, our own little magic in a beating heart, a dripping leaf, a shining

stone. He had said No to the luminous seas that engulf you up above, he wanted

the millions of little backwashes that sing and quiver in a blade of grass, a

squirrel, a bit of granite, a bit of a man who does not know himself and dies

because he does not know himself, a world that groans because it does not know

its solar abysses or its countless roots and rootlets seeking their source below as

well as their heaven above – a hole that did not close upon a tomb. And it was

perhaps the New World broken through, the future that had been waiting there

always, for millennia struggling to find That at last. “Knock and knock...”

But how can that new being be made?

Perhaps it was being made in that little Nil crushed under that terrible,

incomprehensible cataract. “To understand” was to take it on his back and in a

million reluctant fibres. It was made step-by-step and second by second like the

irresistible sap rising in the tree. But it was sap in reverse.

Tremendous sap.

Strange world...

44

That Nil and Null had known centuries of strangeness and he had always been

against, and now it was an astounding Yes which did not want to say anything but

wanted to do. The unknown is difficult. Because our “unknown” is always in

comparison to a known, even in other galaxies and behind other bizarre heads

which concocted, by addition or subtraction, our old story of men or of unfinished

monkeys, and now it was our old galaxy and its old, so beautiful earth, that made

their own miracle or cataclysm burst in a little pierced man with two legs all the

same which understood nothing about it.

So, he stood up to feel that old unsteady meadow, so beautiful with its yellow

clover scattered like beauty spots quivering under the sudden monsoon. It smelled

good, but he no longer knew exactly how to breathe in that cataract, it was like

another air in the midst of the old East wind, or so it seemed, but where were the

North and the West in that ancient compass which rolled and swayed under that

formidable Breath of no known earth.

Then he looked with the eyes of his astounded body and his usual and perfectly

maritime senses, but nothing there was as usual anymore, it was rolling as the

deck of a boat that was no longer his, it bumped against something hard which yet

was not a reef, or perhaps it was his vertebrae, his ribs, that frame, those poorly

secured legs that were the very reef – all that articulated thing with millions of

invisible symmetries which suddenly made their human weight felt, their solid

resistance to that crushing air. As if he had suddenly entered a tomb. Like a

surprised old pharaoh who would unwrap his thousand strips one by one.

Come on, come on! The old maritime and realistic Nil told himself, seeking his

direction. In any world there is a direction! And it was our very world that had lost

its own direction.

He looked at that phenomenon.

He looked at that old Nil seated on those steps of old, who held his little dead

doel bird in his hands, and that old cry of dead centuries, of never dead pain which

suddenly gathered into a burning intensity, a he-point which was like millions of

he once again, in an unacceptable world – it was yes or no. And no, it was death

once again. Then there was that bursting at the top of that thinking and suffering

45

shell, and all-all his being as if pierced by white lightning began to rise and rise

from the soles of his feet and below, from the depths of that darkness of Death

which was like all the darkness of the earth and all its deaths in one point: a tidal

wave of solid, abyssal power, like all the mute cries of millions of billions of

atoms which burst into the open day of this earth and rose and rose towards their

thirst of all times, their Sun of all times, and went through that unusual, human

mortal break which gaped on one point of that planet. It was a long, unending

ascent, second after second, which were perhaps centuries and gathered all the

ages of ruins and sepulchres and prisons under one mask or another, millions of

mortal masks which pretended to live but it was always death which ran, cruel or

pretty and made up or smiling and still fresh running after its tomb. And then...

And then that wide open sea without walls, those immense and luminous and

white and silent seas without shores anywhere, without a surf of pain, that infinity

of softness like the arms of a Mother of all seas, and one could disappear into that

as into an eternity of love.

Then that Cry from below, that call of a million pains in their sealed abyss, their

death again.

And that terrible, incomprehensible reversal which was now beating in that

meadow, that old pharaoh who pulled off his mask in order to breathe. And it was

no longer the previous air.

What was that?

46

17

The Last Unknown

A white page or a white beach... on the earth. On which a first something was

being printed, a first uncertain and vacillating step in a great all-powerful wave

which called another step and still another, as if in search of its own music: it

could hardly be breathed, it looked for itself as if in order to be itself again and

again and everywhere. That little something, that first step of a Nil and nul or

whatever, was rolling with that lightning and light wave which became solid and

crushing while going through that little man: one breathes in, one breathes out.

But when it reached the bottom of the feet, that first breath banged-bumped

against something hard and bounced upwards as if looking for its second breath

which came down again immediately, solid and crushing, in the same little man,

and banged-bumped again against that same invisible rock under the pretty

meadow and bounced upwards again to find its third breath – it no longer stopped,

not for one second: it went up and down, up and down, always bouncing, indeed

he had to breathe every second, make a step and still another, as if he had to

pierce-push that kind of hard thing under his feet, that abyssal wall, that shell

which seemed to entirely cover that man walking in spite of himself, breathing in

spite of himself, and he went on, one step and yet another, like a breathing and

walking and vacillating rammer in that tender meadow quivering under the

monsoon, which was perhaps the same great beating wave that made everything

move, everything breathe, the sprig of lavender and the stars, in search of its

boundless great rhythm, with nothing that stops, without walls around. And yet...

yet it was from that very Wall, that abyssal rock, that old tomb of all tombs that

that Cry had risen, that old thirst of a million deserts calling for their Source at

last, of a million walled-up atoms which wanted their great open sea and their

pulsation in the open air in one and the same beating, of love perhaps.

47

It rose-went down-bounced-rose and went down again, endlessly, like a

monsoon of all skies, like a cataract or a cataclysm which wanted its great

breathing everywhere and its breach in order to flow forever through everything.

A silent cataclysm.

A first mysterious step of another species on the earth.

He was still on his steps, dripping everywhere with that blissful monsoon, like a

refreshed tree which wanted to go up again and again, like sap uprooting itself

from its night and its rock, it was like millennia ago, it was the same substance

and yet it was not the same anymore, it was the same air, perhaps, but drunk in

another way, touched in another way by other unknown organs which forced their

way through that old rebellious and panting hull – the means at hand had lost true

North and their keel as well, sailing one did not know where or in what on such a

little meadow, perhaps it was sailing everywhere with the windswept leaves, with

the cliff and the little hummingbird in its ocean of delight, but he on his two shaky

legs was not in any delight, or perhaps it was the Delight that sought itself and

bumped into that old obsolete carcass, it was an obsolete and moribund species

that tried to breathe that other impossible air again and again, that other imperious

and crushing life, or enter the tomb once more.

What was inacceptable was that “once more”.

So he looked once more at that mortal thing, he looked at his little doel bird on

the edge of a window...

But it was not dead! And it was another lightning strike on that old hull. Doel

was not dead! Except for him, stupid Nil under a thinking skull: the little Doel

bird had not touched its love, it no longer had anybody, no longer its she-doel bird

of all times to sing for. So the song stopped.

And that was it.

So that old obsolete species had not found its song, that old obsolete world and

its thousand ruins had not found their song, and it was about to be engulfed once

more into the dusk of the pharaohs.

We are the last unknown in that species which knows everything except its own

enigma beneath the ruins.

48

And he cried out once more.

49

18

Now on the Earth

He cried out.

– Doella, Doella, my princess of all times! My smile, where are you?

The monsoon pounded and pounded, as if in a frenzy.

She appeared on the path of the squirrel, smiling – my Smile – pink and

dripping as after a good bath, she was singing:

I have always been, O my wild

and miscreant prince,

I am your thirst, your cry

from always

in the ruins and the deserts

I was always there

beneath your deaths and your paths

in nothing

I cried out with you, despaired with you

I was your hope always

I was your song in spite of yourself

I called your step and still another

I poked your burn, your wound

I wanted so much, so much

a man at last, an old miscreant of gods, of devils,

to break his prison, his frontiers

his pretty or black illusion

his heavens, his hells

I have always been waiting

O my wild bird

for you to knock and knock

50

at my window

and deliver me from my night in stone.

And that Nil and Null took those fresh and pink hands, like a drowning man.

– You are here. I no longer know anything, I know you. I no longer know how

one can live. And I love you, even if I die tomorrow.

– But, you little dimwit, you are touching Life itself, the second life, without

tombs, without walls, without anything that stops anywhere, without anything that

divides. And tomorrow is now. It is Now on the Earth.

There was a silence like a drop of eternity on the earth.

The monsoon had torn into a ray of sun which suddenly illumined the leaves,

the amaryllis there on a living, quivering emerald, as if everything responded and

echoed itself on that earth pierced with astonishment, without here or there,

without interruption anywhere, without top or bottom, nor you or I, big or small: a

single sudden Wideness which embraced itself in a million “I’s” everywhere, in a

Silence vibrating like a Music which was understood everywhere and met

everything in a single drop of a boundless ocean.

Nil stood up on his unsteady legs, put his hands together as if to greet that

Moment, nearly toppled on the desk of that swaying or moving meadow, in that

crushing Breath that rose from the abysses, descended from one did not know

where and imperiously and tirelessly pounded and pounded that old hull and its

astounded little man who did not understand anything anymore, perhaps pounded

the whole earth in the same boundless cataclysm. He no longer understood

anything about it and nobody understood anymore. It was a new world that was

toppling into... what?

– But... Nil stammered.

– There is no but, little dimwit I love.

She placed a finger on that beating chest.

– Everything is there. Knock and knock at the windowpane of the world. It is

up to you to discover it now.

And she disappeared with a little dancing step and a smile.

51

52

19

The Survivor of the Worlds

To discover what?

A thousand times, he had discovered his death. And now that insane world with

its popes in perpetuity, its science, that summit of blessed and triumphant death,

that great macaque organized and sanctified by its gods and devils, that bruised

and each time ruined earth, with a few painful hearts below that which did not

know what or where and died under their mute sorrow.

And one starts over again.

Death vanquished for a nil and null little man, for a sole little doel bird, it made

no sense! Nothing to sing for, only millions of grinding and speechifying little

macaques, democratic and good Christians and what the heck! “Knock and

knock”, but on what armoured windowpane of the world?

One day, had not a little fish hit a rock, suffocating, there, on a null beach. It

was the same, it was millions and billions of years ago. To start all that again? For

whom, for what?

But he had heard that Song, what the heck!

It existed somewhere and for something.

He banged and banged against his Rock.

There was no Heaven to flee to.

– O my princess, will you tell me?

Naturally, she said nothing.

53

“Little dimwit2!” he could still hear her. How do you go from a canary to a

pretty seagull on the wild and foaming Coast?... You have to open the cage, there

is no handbook for that! It must be done with your thirst, with your very question,

beating and toiling and foaming on those old rocks. Besides, he had made a hole

in all that up there, those heavens, those null deliverances, he had finished his job

of the hopeless monkey. He had emerged into that other Air – imperious, crushing

– but why crushing? It pounded and pounded that kind of hard thing there below,

like an irreducible No beneath his feet, under the pretty meadow. He was like a

locomotive rod that banged and banged to bounce again and spring again into

another breath, that perpetual Yes which sucked him in to breathe out into that

tireless No of Iron and Rock – “No”, it was Death itself, irrefutable like the very

millennia, like the millions of species that disappeared into the same hole. The

hole had to be pierced through, death had to be pierced through, that tireless No

that called for its Yes – one could not stop breathing! One could not say, “Truce! I

stop”. It was all triggered, like the stars, the tides and the surf on the pretty cliff. It

was irreversible like the beginning of an Age, and perhaps of all Ages, an endless

geology which uprooted its own secret at the bottom of the hole. And it pounded

and pounded that old survivor of a thousand worlds and species disappeared into

their hole. Was he going to disappear like the old pharaohs to let those triumphing

and speechifying macaques pass as if it were the goal of the Ages and of a million

pains under the ruins?

Even if there is only one doel bird, it will breathe for a few new little doel birds

to be able to breathe and sing in a new world. One had to survive, to spread the

Word.

But it was strange.

Impossible and more and more impossible.

That other Air that had reversed, those few drops of a formidable cataract which

had gone through that little pierced man, not only rushed in like solid lightning,

but increased its flow, if we may say so, day after day, from morning to evening

and second to second, made its incoercible flow denser and bumped, sank into a

2 In French, “serin” means dimwit but also canary bird.

54

hole that was harder and harder, thicker and thicker, resistant like super-matter,

and immense, endless, as if it were the whole agglomerated earth that gathered its

irreducible No, millennia and millions of hardened years piling up their crust,

layer after layer, like stacked Death.

Was he going to burst, volatilize or shatter into a thousand pieces of an

irreducible skeleton, into a billion caparisoned and swirling atoms revolving

madly around a microscopic central point or knot or centre of cosmic No – like

the very Death that had built that world and all the galaxies revolving around it.

And that same Yes, implacable, supreme, which wanted something else.

Like Himself against Himself.

A divine cataclysm.

Was this Earth, now, going to blow up once more or surrender – split open to

the Miracle of all its pain? To that great song of a little white beach which called

for a step and another to discover its sublime Note millions of times?

One had to survive, to find the Note that changes everything.

55

20

The Next Air

Strange, all the same.

It was that No that called that Yes, an Abyss of abysses that refused and wanted

to emerge from its darkness. It was like the first tomb of all tombs. It was deeper

than our pain and our tombs, it was from before the pharaohs with their gaze

beyond the ruins. It was like the first Enigma looking at itself. We are in the little

story of a formidable pre-history which contained that point, that core, that seed of

the worlds – was it not going to bloom? Here, on this earth.

All the same, it was curious.

It was the contrary of everything.

As he sank into that, day after day, and it seemed that decades passed, ever

denser, ever more unbreathable and one had to breathe anyway, ever more

unlivable and one had to live anyway – he, that not dead little Nil but each second

was precarious, like the edge of... – he saw through the thousand holes of his

body, he touched through a thousand wounds, he listened to, in a wordless and

immediate language, the great chaos of the world, the great tide that rose and rose

like a hideous disgorging: the frontiers of the mapped-up little men cracking

everywhere, the dotted lines scattering like confetti in a sinister carnival under

humanitarian bombs or hypnotic and deceitful loudspeakers everywhere;

everybody was a threat for everybody, everyone wanted to take everything,

dominate everything, convert everything into his finances or his laws or his

particular god and one no longer knew who was devil or god, helmeted or skull-

capped in black or red or pontifical white, all the bandits claimed to adhere to

“human rights”, everybody knew everything and no longer knew anything, it was

56

the wrongs and rights of a million little grinding macaques climbing up all trees,

all thrones, a million made-up and masked antics which invaded all frontiers, all

ears in a general dumbing-down and the eyes in an increasing and suffocating

mist, even the trees decayed, and eventually even geology rebelled and spat out its

volcanoes or hurricanes almost everywhere. The earth had had enough of that

clever and devouring species. And the humans who remained humans, hunted and

outlawed, hid in their powerless pain or in a burning question without an answer.

It was the Earth itself that had to answer.

It was the Abyss itself that disgorged its old Evolution, it was the old death that

struggled to continue to live under the crushing of that unbreathable air.

But...

But it was the death of Death. The old rock bottom that made its Miracle burst

on a new little beach. And whoever does not dare to breathe the next air dies, as

did the failed amphibians.

A last metamorphosis must be accomplished.

And time passed

And it was perpetually on the verge of...

And it did not burst.

57

21

The Rock

Nil, the old nil and null, crushed and bruised in all its irreducible and obstinate

old skeleton, looked far away, over there in a reverberating mist that rose behind

the trees, behind those centuries where something was always missing, and what

is missing?

Was he tired?

And suddenly, he cried out:

– Doella, Doella, how I need you!

– But I am here!

She came out of nowhere, from the quivering grass or a firefly of mist.

– I am always here! I beat and I fight at your side but you don’t see anything!

You still have your old eyes of sorrow.

– The eyes of my body need to see you, the hands of my body need to touch

you, to embrace you again. I need the music of your gaze.

She put her hands on those torn shoulders, her smile on that old wrinkled

forehead with furrows of shadow like ravines.

He closed his eyes... as if he could not bear that long gaze of living centuries

that sank down to the bottom like a well of tenderness, as if it were what he had

always been waiting for, his Doella entirely there who had banged and banged at

his windowpanes for ages.

He closed his eyes down to the bottom of his old night as if all the ages were

there in one second dazzled with love, as if all questions melted into their sublime

answer, there, at the bottom of that hole of all pain and all tombs. And something

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burst in that pack of men. Like an earthquake, like a light breath springing from

the bottom of the nights on a little white beach.

And everything changed.

It was always a fight, a war against oneself and everything, as if the little man

were made of a shouting No, the next man to be shot with his back to the Wall for

centuries, like burning at the next stake, it was as coagulated as the first vertebrate

that must learn his world; and to survive was always to sur-die with a memory of

indelible pain, it was engraved in the tongue of the race, it was the first word of

the world and the last one with a few songs in-between in order to forget. It was a

million Walls which made an indestructible Law, it was the entire Earth in a

merciless gravitation of atoms under similar stars, before the eyes of an

impregnable God who sent you back to heaven or to hell forever; but Hell was

ourselves, always, in our hole of humans, our similar rock where some primal

lichen had stuck. And then...

And then the Rock burst.

And then the immemorial Memory burst like an old window pane in which the

reflection of a singing doel bird looked at itself, completely there, completely

outside on the pretty meadow, completely dead because it had lost its love of all

times and there was no longer anything to sing, no longer anybody to sing for.

And the whole Earth had lost its song.

And then that Love of all times looked at him down to the bottom of his

immemorial hole, and those millions of walled-up atoms suddenly emerged into

the open air in their great liberated wave, in their song that had always been Love.

As if that Gaze recognized its likeness in the very No of Matter, in its atoms. Had

it not already looked at that No of an old fish to make the cry of a seagull burst

forth on a solitary rock?

It was a little white beach pouring out in a light breath, it was the world as for

the first time in the world.

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22

A First Misfortune

Doella had disappeared, she smiled a million times, in the surf and the lichens

which were going to make this or that little beast, called by that smile, rolled by

that great wave which wanted its song in the shingle and the light lavender on the

cliffs of the world, and other stars to make thousands of worlds with its joy. It was

the immense harmony of the little and big beasts, of the curious squirrel and the

roaring lion and the seagull in the trough of the wave and the white egret on the

rice field, and everything was nourishing and fertilizing – nobody asked

questions, it was there, quite living and walking, one step and another called by

the next mystery, the joy of a discovery to be made, a million ever vaster

discoveries, pushed and growing, burgeoning and thirsty for a Gaze afar which

wanted its great Mystery gaping in everything, its full heaven of love and its great

wave undulating through everything, in the tiny pebble and the thousand hollows

of the cliff to make its light foam spurt out. But still nobody asked questions, no

gaze met that Gaze, no palpitation embraced, touched that Beating as love

caresses its Love of all times with its hands, its quivering body.

At the end of footsteps and ages, after a great number of curious squirrels, a

first misfortune happened to the world, a gaze that looked at its own mystery, a

first wall that suffocated, probing its vanished light, its lost joy – that sought its

love in a thousand changing faces, made its first teeth to take and bite and seize

without ever touching its own buried power... And fortresses rose up amongst

hostile sands, and everything was hostile. And the question closed in on itself, got

stuck, bogged down in the swamps of a thought, of a thousand possible thoughts

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and everything was impossible, everything fought and confronted everything and

grasped its small light to establish its infallible god, its law, its thousand laws ever

more certain and always crumbling under other ruins. Everybody looked for “the

means” that saves everything, deciphers everything, explains everything and

dominates everything. It was the reign of the better at macaque maths and

electronic magic through a thousand hypnotic lines which communicated with

nothing except its own racket, tied everybody in the same mortal bundle, more

and more lethal and suffocating. As if the world itself prayed for dying, looked for

the infallible means to die faster and faster and disappear from that damned

planet.

Nobody looked on anymore, except the indubitable microscopes and telescopes

and stethoscopes of an ill man.

But there was at last, after years and much pain, a Man who looked on and

asked his supreme question in the ruins of our story and who touched that old

irreducible Rock under the Misfortune of the ages.

And that first misfortune contained our supreme key: that great Gaze at the

bottom of all that sought itself, those thousands of pains and all those vain tears

which dug and dug in their mute and walled-up hole to deliver the Note that

changes everything, that first Delight of worlds which had made its wave and its

foam and its thousands of species roll to listen everywhere, hear everywhere in a

million ebbs and flows of itself, a million colours and notes of itself, a sole great

Song of beauty and love.

There was only one Means in the world, and that means walked along with us.

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23

The Little Canary

And the Rock had burst

under a first gaze.

And Yogmaya looked on.

– Well, little canary, you see how it is!

That crushing, and then suddenly that light world, those delivered atoms, as if

he could fly, dance! As if his body were caught in the great wave.

There was such an exquisite, such a tender a smile in those slightly teasing

eyes, a deep, bottomless smile, as if you were seized by Love itself, for all time

and forever, you could engulf yourself there with delight, all centuries and worlds

and pains were abolished into their Mother and the mother of all the seas of the

world, boundless, without anything that closed up anywhere. Without heaven up

above.

– You wanted reality... I give it to you.

And Yogmaya, the Great Mother, the Magician of the worlds, disappeared from

the astounded eyes of that little canary which had lost its cage.

It was on the earth, it was the now of a Time that had forgotten its minutes and

its seconds, of an earth that had cast off its moorings and frontiers, its latitudes

and longitudes, its distances of a thousand times cut up into a thousand little

boxes, its heres-theres: everything communicated instantly, as if everything were

everywhere at the same time, each drop like the entire ocean. And it was

terrestrial, it was in a dumbfounded little man, fallen from some unknown new

62

star, everything was new, like a first time on the earth – or was it the earth of all

times that was discovering its first time?

– Let us see-let us see, that little canary told himself, who was perhaps a

humming-bird or a wild duck on the same pretty meadow, but who had kept his

head, a little pierced, and his strange legs, weightless, as if he felt like dancing...

Perhaps it was the earth that had lost its box?

– Doella, Doella! Where are you? My Doella.

But she was there, under his sudden nose which breathed in flowers, the same

forest, but it was another air as if everything was tasty, nourishing. She had her

round and pink face, her almond eyes, split in a slightly mocking smile, so tender.

– At last, you see clearly! My prince, my gentle wild prince, where have you

been all that time?

He blinked, he could not believe his eyes. “Where was I?”

He sat down, the grass was so soft, it caressed him with a million fingers, the

air quivered in the leaves, it was like an immense softness as far as one could see,

as if he were emerging from a long illness. And his Doella, there, as if he could

see her entirely for the first time, seemed to radiate far-far away in unison with all

that is. An immense harmony everywhere. How was it possible?... as if for the

first time he understood how, why his little doel bird sang, for nothing, for

everything, for the sunrise, for the rain, the winds, for the glory of being in the

world. Everything was a consecration.

He put his palms on that earth as if to embrace, to bless it. He did not know how

to sing, but his heart, his soul was a hymn of gratitude. He looked at his Doella for

him, and there was only love, love as one breathes, it was so simple!

– I was in a heavy time.

Then that old world came up again for a second with its old good-for-nothing

under his bridge, like a nightmare at a glance.

– I was in the Stone Age.

He looked at that bit of grey-black granite on those steps where he had been

seated so many times, burning, praying to the gods or the devils, defying heavens,

hells and all their laws. And suddenly, it was a revelation: but!.. that Matter, that

granite, that stone, a wall, it was flat and dry and hard, and it was less solid than

that crushing cataract! Stone was like a lifeless crust, it was blind matter that hid

its old secret underfoot, while “that” that crushed was so dense, so intense and

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warm, golden, it was like the Life of life, like the living essence of Matter that

went through that crust, those millions of walled-up atoms, it was like coagulated

Love, defended by a thousand black whirls revolving on themselves, defended and

defying like a supreme call to our soul and our body: do you want life or death –

until that essence of Love, that essential Matter touches its last molecule, its

supreme Core which recognizes itself, and everything bursts with Love, pure,

simple and forever. And all-powerful.

A supple solidity: the next Matter. Our next substance.

He looked again at his Doella, as if to be certain. It was all there, beaming and

radiant and light and delivered on that damned and miraculous earth. It was the

Miracle of ages and pain and cursed paths where we had walked so much without

knowing, in a Blackness that contained its very Light, called and torn by our own

Secret, walled-up in our own tomb and our mortal gravitation which so much

wanted-called for its deliverance into a free and light air.

It was the Goal that sought itself.

It was the old wound that sought its healing.

Then a great Breath came.

– Well, little canaries of old, look closely at your laws and your infallible

pontiffs and give up your worn and obsolete habit of stone.

It seemed to him that it was Yogmaya’s voice in the autumn that blew her wind

of storm and tenderness on those old anthropoids and made her earth quake to

oblige them to pierce through their walls and their stupidity.

And what fell was simply the old bark.

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24

The Prayer of the Wild Beasts

But the macaques still reigned – temporarily.

With all the weapons of a god

And the arrogance of a demon

He reigned over a hypnotized people, perverted by the enormous paid means

that they had before their eyes, their ears, the newspapers that made instantaneous

goddesses or devils to bomb, and washed brains reduced to the corrupted instincts

of animals, which did not even have the candour and the simple health of the

animal. Even birds knew where to find their honey. And innumerable charlatans,

sugary and religious and humanitarian of no humanity, grotesque and

democratesque clowns, televised and decorated, mitred and hatted in all the

languages of the world, who did not even have the boldness of the jackal howling

at its carcass: they stuffed themselves with everything, corrupted everything,

consciousnesses and wisdom acquired by other Ages – they knew everything

since they were able to fly in the air and steal3 in purses and up to the other

planets soon domesticated and populated with their proliferating fellows who

multiplied like rats after having gnawed away the entire earth and poisoned the air

as well as the brains – only innumerable crows remained, which fed themselves

on their rubbish, and poor people, too simple, mute and painful under that mortal

stranglehold. And poor true beasts threatened in their skins to make pretty hats for

the kings of the world and the distinguished macaques. 3 In French “voler” means to fly, but also to steal.

65

It was odious, undoubtedly.

But who was still aware of that monstrosity?

Who still cried out? Revolutions as well as “men” were engulfed under that

mortal tide.

The earth, the winds, the stars, said that they had had enough of that barbarous

species. As did the little squirrels.

And one day, there was a great Council of the wild beasts. The lark had uttered

its cry in the forest, everybody had understood in that language in which

everything is understood beyond tribes and distances in that great wave that was

the first song of the world. The elephant, slow and majestic, arrived first, because

he was already there on the edge of the enchanted clearing where the pond

murmured. He knew already. On its ear perched the great dancing squirrel with its

little red face and its small curious eyes. A true little canary, all yellow, escaped

from its Caribbean cage, sat on that great forehead, wrinkled with wisdom; the

shy pink doe had slipped between its powerful legs with its careful companion

spotted with orange. Then, in a circle, the panther, watching the tender brotherly

prey out of the corner of its eyes, the brutal bison with its hoarse cry, the wild and

victorious cock, a few silent hummingbirds perched on the red flowers of the

hibiscus. On the high grass, a little doel bird, quite new, was waiting.

The elephant lifted its trunk gently and spoke in elephant language, which they

all understood: “My wild brothers, we are surrounded, invaded and condemned,

our old territory is violated, our borders are barbed-wired and pierced with roads,

dismembered for the machines of those foul-smelling bipeds...

– Yes, they smell like dead bodies! The great Malabar squirrel exclaimed from

the top of the elephantine ear.

“... They have split up our free territory and when the grass becomes dry, we

cannot move to the next clearing anymore. And they make more and more

macaque-like and devouring little rats...”

– Sorry! Sorry! An old macaque hidden in the bush protested. We only climb

up trees and the pretty leaves are becoming scarce. If we can, we sneak into those

66

thieves’ houses to steal their cooking and the delicious fruit they have stolen from

us.

The little yellow canary opened its wings from the top of that noble forehead:

– I am a canary, it is understood, but I have always sung in spite of my cage.

So?

The great elephant lowered its trunk and remained silent. He looked into the

distance as if to question its mute ancestors. Then it spoke slowly while flapping

its ears. The squirrel slipped to the ground and everyone became silent.

– Only the Great Magician, our Mother, can save us. We are done. And what

can we do?

Then there was a great silent prayer. Not a leaf moved in the saddened clearing.

But the very new little doel bird, quite new on its blade of wild grass, shook its

tail and said simply, in its trilled language like tender drops of dew:

– We have been born so that the earth may continue to sing.

And then?

And then Yogmaya, the Great one, embraced the whole clearing in her long

robe of white light and all the leaves quivered, all the drops of the pond rippled in

a Moment of eternity, and she said:

WHAT IS REAL

WILL BE

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25

The Revolution of the Real

The little doel bird, quite new, had came back to his native meadow, it did not

knock at the windowpanes anymore, it had lost its illusions, it knew; and besides,

all the windowpanes of the world had been broken under a formidable new

Breath. The wild old Nil slid and danced on his meadow with his Princess of all

times, as if carried by the air, as if he never had any weight, as if it were an

aberration of learned thinkers and of their laws, it was such a tender air, as if made

of the joy of being in the world – of being, very simply.

It was a whole world to learn, with its means of action and communication, its

organs. Its next substance.

For a moment, which was perhaps an eternity, he stopped to listen under his

feet; he seemed to hear the sliding of the old waters, the Nile, the Ganges, the

Orinoco, the old living echo of the Vedic hymns and the lyre of Orpheus and the

Amazon riding through the wild forests... then a break... something that contained

its death but tried to continue living, and then... a swarming Nothing, sticking

labels on the world and its millions of tools, its gigantic trickery to try to catch the

only thing that is and makes those millions of beating years be. And nothing beat

anymore: it was standing ruins covered in concrete. And then that formidable

Breath that rose from under the ground, under their feet, squirting out the cruel

darkness, breaking frontiers, reasons and unreasons, cathedrals of nonexistent

Holiness, high global Institutions and their thousand corridors which opened,

gaping on a cacophony of cries and words that no longer meant anything in any

language. Everybody lied. It was Death that showed its true face on remnants of

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men and vituperating concrete. It was the old crack that broke at last to let through

the new Air, the old mortal gravitation that reversed to deliver its immortal core

and meet its great Wave, its union with everything, its lightness that had always

been singing and light.

But the heavy men blew up like balloons in that lightness, it was unbreathable

and impossible for all the sciences of the world and all the bodies corrupted by

that irrefutable and mortal Falsehood – it was a cataclysm or perhaps the end of

the world, it was perhaps what the old pharaohs silently gazed at, listening to the

murmur of the desert and the call of an unknown Voice in the distance.

So many Ages had passed, but a little doel bird still knew what made the earth

sing, even in a cage, even under the ruins of millennia.

And a Human being, all the same, had made a hole in the old sepulchres. A tiny

point of being which silently radiated through our walls, which silently called

other points of being under the ruins, which made the impossible emerge and

become its only Possible. Because the world has always begun and begun again in

one point – a sole point of Real which makes the unknown Goal of all Ages walk

step by step.

It was not the end of the world or of a few millennia. It was the end of an Age.

It was not hell that opened its devil’s tripe in a tomb, it was our heaven on the

earth and in a body – for whoever wants it.

It was the great Goddess of Beauty coming out of the stone to create her new

reality.

Our last metamorphosis.

And who wants it?

But there were still mute, unhappy men who wanted it – ready for everything,

even for death and the assault of the illusions of the old law, rather than all that.

Points of Real who told themselves, WHAT? Like the old pharaohs in the pink

dusk of the desert.

It was another Age.

It was another being on the earth.

It was the beginning of a new world.

Nil, the old Nil of seventeen thousand years was seventeen new years old on the

earth of now.

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Doella, his Doella of all times, smiled near him on the meadow of the ages gone

and returned on the light wings of a great musical wave which embraced the

forthcoming universes.

November 18, 1999