Falling

Thought of exhaustion, exhausted thought. I would like to come to the end of thinking; would like for thinking to leap up in my place. I will give myself to thought. I will let thought come to itself. Come with me. Meet me there where you have no strength to think; let us meet there where we have fallen. Then will thought take place, and take our place. Then will it hold us in its own arms.

Otto the Postman in Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice falls. He lies on the wooden floor, laughing. He speaks, from the floor. Glorious to see a man stretched out full on his belly, praying. I’ve seen it – a man, otherwise powerful, lying full stretched on the floor. He would give himself to God. But Otto lies on his back; he has fallen into the arms of chance. No one has caught him; the ground holds him.

Like Andrei Rublev when he walks out into the mud. Like Stalker when he lies down on the low island in the stream. Behind him appears an Anubian Alsation, like a spirit guide. Fall down: no one will catch you but the earth. But to fall thus is to be scattered across the earth like dice. You have fallen; the world knows you as blessed. You are a saint of chance.

The face of God is worn out. You do not pray. Or prayer is thought, the whole of thought, as it is present in you. Come with me. Follow me there, to where we will fall together. There where thought needs our weakness to come to itself. Where thought desires only to hold itself, to touch itself as I would touch you. But thought will not be kept. Thought keeps us. It would keep us, the exhausted ones, who have fallen from everything but thinking.

‘I would like to learn how to fall.’ – ‘But you cannot learn.’ – ‘I would like to fall.’ – ‘But falling must be what you do not want.’

We are exhausted, the sacred ones. Thought crowns us. Thought is joined to itself in our exhaustion, and there it unjoins the world. For that is what thought demands, impossible gift: you will think as no one; nothing will think in your place.

I will think, says thought, by taking your place, and all places. To take place – to take time, too. Both are taken, space and time; both interrupted. Thought is always a block, a break; it is the impossibility of thinking. And you can see it, like a holy idiocy, in those who have thought. It has marked them, deep in their eyes. They laugh with thought; they pass amongst us, but thought laughs with them.

How can they endure us, who are still not thinking? How, who exist all too much, who are adequate with respect to themselves. For thought demands failure, inadequatio. Inadequation: thought fails; thought is exhausted. But that exhaustion is thought; thinking arrives then, when you have collapsed. At last you are unemployed. At last you have been delivered into the errancy of thinking.

‘I cannot bear it.’ – ‘It is the unbearable. Thought cannot be thought, but only borne, and to the point of the unbearable.’ – ‘I cannot bear it.’ – ‘Then you must come with me, we must both fall, and thought will be there between us.’

Break the world from itself. Think as fragment, and the world as fragment. Thought: the inadequate. Inadequacy that meets the inadequation of the world. Become with it, then. With the whole world. That is what is meant by truth. It is the way truth comes, and by way of thought. You must contain what you cannot contain. Fall, and roll the dice across the earth.

‘Fall.’ – The arms of chance cannot hold me.’ – ‘Fall.’ – ‘Nothing will hold me.’

You knew it then, cycling, didn’t you? Knew it as you cycled around the new estates, didn’t you? The sky, the whole day watched you in its blindness. No one saw you. Was that you first fall? Had you fallen before? In truth, you fell as a child, you were always fallen, you who was never himself. But how to affirm what revealed itself then? How to will your own unemployment?

I am unemployed. I would not have it otherwise. I have been dropped by the world. I would not want it otherwise. I have fallen as Otto has fallen. I speak as Otto spoke. I think. Thought is with me. Join me here, where thought is present. Come, to where failure is absolute. You have no chance. You have no hope. Or: there is hope, but not for you. There is a future, but not for you.

Despair without object. Despair that is the whole world in its blindness. The world looks at you. It says: ‘again? One more time?’ And you must say, ‘again.’

‘I am praying.’ – ‘You are thinking.’ – ‘I lie on my back.’ – ‘Thought is thinking.’