I’m tired, I know that, I see the evidence. Tired: heavy eyelids and darkness beneath the eyes. Why these early mornings? Why, early, do I want to write, and that first of all? To write, yes, and before the dawn – to begin before the day begins and even before it begins to begin. For it is not yet dawn; there is not yet the intimation of light which does not glimmer, but comes all at once, the whole sky, not glowing – this is a northern city, in winter – but blandly and flat, the whole sky at once. The dawn will say: I am here, I am absolute. The day in the dawn will say: I am arriving; you will not resist me.
But it is not yet dawn; the day has not begun to begin. What, then of this hour, which is not yet dawn but lies at the end of night? The hour of the wolf – is that what it’s called? But I’ve never heard anyone call it that; it is something I have read. And isn’t it too grandiloquent a name for these hours, mine, at the desk by the window? The wolf? – There are no wolves here. What mammal could find its way into the concrete back yard? I’ve never seen a cat jump down to the yard floor.
Sometimes, birds come – magpies, to peck at the bin bags when the bin lid is open, and blackbirds, inspecting the muddy grime around the drain. There are insects, of course – a summer trail of ants from my kitchen to the wall opposite, under the bench. And towards the end of last summer, a daddy long legs, creature of the threshold; and then there are the flies circle in my rooms. When did I last see a wasp?
But this is not a place for animals, for life; nothing comes here. The concrete is absolute; it has no relation to life. Even the plants are dying – slowly, it is true, it may take years, but dying nonetheless, rotting up from the potted earth. No animals, no wolves. Only algae, which spreads itself greenly across the wet concrete. Algae, which makes the ground slippery when I go out to put bags in the wheelie bin.
What good is it to me, the yard? An open space, that is enough, a temple open to the mediocrity of the day, that is enough. But without it, what would I be able to write? How would I be able to take in the first breath that would allow me to begin? For that breath is necessary, even though I betray it. It is necessary, that first openness, that receptivity: the divine afflatus. Begin, it says, and even though I never begin, even though writing never unfolds itself into a narrative, I am in love with the thought of beginning. Who says that writing has been discovered?
Not yet dawn, and I can see nothing of it, the yard. In the predawn, there is blackness and dark indigo and the orange glow of the street lamps and that is all. How many more days will I live like this? I would like many of them, passing from one to another and so unto eternity. I would like to live a life like this, rising before dawn. But these are aberrant days, I know that. These are rare and exceptional days, I know. And I am tired, too tired; my eyelids are heavy and there is darkness below my eyes. How heavy my body, how dark! Heavy, and robbed of potential like a wave that falls back upon itself without breaking!
Yesterday, I set myself the task of writing of my body and the destiny of my body. Yesterday I thought to write of fatigues and vagueness, of that being out of tune which robs me of the ability to find my way through the day. Sometimes I find myself lost among objects; where am I?, I ask myself, what am I doing? There are tasks to perform, many of them, urgent tasks, but I fail them one by one. Tired, I lean forward in my chair, I open a book or surf the net and am lost from my duties, sinking below them. Is it because I use my strength elsewhere? Is it because it is already used up, my strength, before I come to my tasks?
The wave does not break; the sea roils in itself. There is no issue, no result. What is preparing itself here? What is about to unfold? But the sea does not reach its shore; it is ferment without event. It is the non-event which happens; writing speaks only of this, of what does not begin. How close I have come to it, writing – but to what am I close? Only to the event where writing seems to become possible and then, at the same stroke, moves out of reach.
Writing, beginning, non-beginning, is it not thus that you let speak the address that you are? Is that your call, and that first of all – the saying, now, which reveals in everything that is said? But I am not close to you; or if it is so, then it is another in me who is close. The stranger, the companion who writes in my place. Does he write? Or isn’t it that he stops me writing even as I write? Is it because of him that I do not begin?
Hour of the wolf, how laughable! Non-hour of the non-wolf; hour without wolves, without animals. Out there, green algae on concrete and the dying plants; I can’t see them. Out there, the concrete space, whose contours I cannot see.
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