Without blogging, I would have given up any ambition I had had to write. Let me rephrase that: without blogging, I would have written on writing at one remove; I would have kept myself from writing. A second rephrase (but how many are required?): without blogging, I would have been content to let it go, this writing, which will not be arrested in thesis or argument, and whose method is to go by going, to live as pure means without end.
This writing – but what is written here? What is allowed to write? I will call it a push – a counterpush: that force of resistance which presses back, out of itself. Writing: pushing back against what is written; pushing against the said and the order of the said, who is it you would address?
Without blogging, I would not have written without name. Without it, there would always be my name, and writing would have lagged behind itself. Writing, saying: what kind of companions will you call into existence? What readers do you seek? And I am not one of them, the first reader, but one among others? Am I not the first and most avid of readers, the one who will feed writing his own life; who will let what he writes become the said through which writing would speak? Yes, the keenest reader, the one who writes in order to know the surprise of what resists him in his own words.
My words – not mine; who are you that writes on the other side of the mirror? Who are you that struggles with me and that I know only by his resistance? Sometimes I think I would like to reach you, like those rubber-gloved mirror-crossers in Orphee; sometimes it is into your darkness I would drown like Blanchot’s Narcissus, who sees in the pool only what he is not. I tell myself, then, I am coming, and think these words will bring you close to me, close in your distance. But then I know that you are not here even when you are here; that I miss you most when I know your proximity.
For aren’t you there in my own heart? Isn’t it in my heart that you live, close one, distant one? My heart is already the mirror; what is inside is outside. I write to find you, but also to surprise you. Did you know I was coming? Yes, you knew; you had already set out to find me. You had set out from the furthest part of the universe to find me. How was it that you were waiting all along? And how is it that you still wait, that all you are is waiting? You will never arrive; and will I arrive for you? I know you by the blindness of your push – but by what do you know me? By this writing: you who have never lived ask for my life.
What am I to write? It is 7.30 at night; it’s dark again, and I’m at my desk again. 7.30 at night, when 12 hours ago it was dawn and in 12 hours time it will be dawn again. I should tell you a story, companion. I should speak of my life, and know you draw close. But what will you understand, you who I know as a mother her unborn child. You push; you reach me from inside. You are not alive, not yet. But it is as though you had died, you who had never lived.
Isn’t this what Kafka feared – never to have lived, despite living? To live meant more for him than to exist. Existence is what you do not possess, companion. It’s what I give you. Stories, that’s what you ask for. Events. There must be material. And through that you will push, through writing will I know you, as, perhaps Philip K. Dick knew his dead twin through the Dark Haired Girl.
Without blogging, I would have eluded you, that I know. Without it, I would have forgotten you, golem, on whose forehead I write these words. Will they wake you? But you will never wake. Unless there is an awakening that is also a slumber – a vigil that is kept in a dream. Sometimes I imagine you are dreaming of me, companion. Sometimes I think you know me. Why, when I imagine your face, it is mine with the eyes sewn shut? Why, when I think of it, is it mine without eyes and without mouth?
One day, on the other side of the mirror you will mouth the name that will dissolve my own. One day, every word I write will be unwritten. And until then? Write to lose; write to forget. Write – lose; write – forget.
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But let me continue these reflections. Without blogging – what then? A book a year; a book and several essays a year: slowly I would find my way to work of which I would feel unashamed. And now? – ‘What are you working on?’ – ‘Nothing’ – ‘What have you been reading?’ – ‘Nothing’.
How confused he is when he is told, the narrator of Tarkovsky’s Mirror, that he is dying. Confused – is it a dream? I think it is – a dream. How is it that that scene draws the whole film around it (what does Lacan call it? A quilting point?)? But what is it to dream you are already dead? What is it to experience your life as it was dreamt by the dead one, by your companion, death-in-life?
Statues move for the Alexander of Bergman’s film, and Ismael can see the boy’s wish fulfilled. All the while, Alexander’s dead father, who died playing the ghost in Hamlet, reappears to his son in a white suit. He says nothing; he looks doleful, but he is there for Alexander, the son (and doesn’t he appear, the ghost, to his own mother, as a living reproach, as an entreaty, saying: help my son?). There – but is he there?
Without blogging, which does not require a name? I would not know you; you would not have come. Or is it I who comes to you, as the ghost, the companion. It is dark and I am unsure. Who is the ghost? Who lives? But this is the sign: we are merging; I have reached the crossing point. You are as close as you can come. Will it be possible to press my hand into the glass as into a pool of water? Of course not. But tonight I know whose hand it is that presses against mine.
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