Thunder and Silence

‘Write our story.’ – ‘There was no story.’ – ‘Write it.’

But it did not begin; it never stepped over the threshold. How can you speak of what does not belong to the continuity of time?’ The story: the attempt to reach a story. Or a story of the failure of stories – not, now, of the limit against which stories are wrecked, but of a detour so vast, you can never come to a place from which to begin. How to speak of what has no contour?

‘Speak. Tell me what happened.’ What happened? Do you think I could tell you? Is that what you want – to be told, to round off the event? But it did not end and it will not end. Who can speak of it? ‘But it speaks.’ It speaks, saying nothing, saying itself, thunder and silence. And who are we except the speakers it elected, the relays it called for, that speaking that speaks only by withholding itself in what is said? But what was it apart from us, this speech? What was it, apart from its speakers?

But I know that when it used us, when it spoke in our speech, it was only to lighten itself, to disperse itself, to make it that it did not weigh upon anyone. It was to be kept afloat – alive, and by passing from the one to the other: yes that’s what it wanted.

‘Tell me what happened.’ With what kind of telling? How to narrate a story that never reached a beginning? How, when that beginning will never be reached? It is deferral itself. It is detour. Why do you suppose that there’s anything to be reached, or that we would have the means to reach it?

‘We lacked the means.’ Yes, that’s true. But wasn’t that why we were selected? Wasn’t it our weakness that selected us? It was by our weakness that we found one another. And weakness that made us sink down, each beside the other.

To sink down – to rest: that’s when we heard it, the thunder, the silence. That’s when it was heard, in the background, withdrawing, and sounding in its withdrawal. ‘That’s what we exchanged, that speech.’ No: we were what allowed it to lighten itself, to be heard, to be lightened. It was what spoke by what was said. ‘What we said.’ What spoke itself between us.