A Breath of Life (13 page)

And there’s more: when it vibrates as a result of the slight shock of the balls against each other — some musical notes result. And the object if well made and induced sings swiftly — a swift Do Re Mi . . .

“Grabbing the word.” I grab the word and make it thing.

I grabbed joy and made it like a brilliant crystal in the air. Joy is a crystal. Nothing needs to have shape. But the thing absolutely must in order to exist.

“
Silver Box
”

Has it ever occurred to you to feel sorry for an object? I have a medium-sized silver box and it inspires pity in me. I don’t know what in this silent, immobile object makes me understand its solitude and the punishment of eternity. I don’t place anything inside the box so that it won’t be burdened.

And the heavy lid encloses the void. I always place flowers around it so they can relieve the life-death of the box — the flowers are also an homage to the anonymous artisan who sculpted in heavy sterling silver a work of art.

“
The House
”

This is a castle of solid stone. But its aura is a nest of soft moonlight. Upon it the sun shines like a mirror.

The greatest thing one can have is the house. Beethoven understood this and composed a resplendent symphonic overture called “The Consecration of the House.” I heard this music that reassures me at six-thirty on a still sleepy morning. Hearing such remarkable music provoked a delirious dream in which the things of the house moved around and were bewitched. So I thought: I must simply must have enormous corollas of fine smooth but wild feathers to place in my house.

I looked at the stone upon the table. It was large and very heavy. I plunged into vague meditation. I looked at it. Almost black. And inexorable.

One way of living more is to use your senses in a context not properly their own. For example: I see a marble table that is naturally to be seen. But I stroke as subtly as possible its form, I feel its coldness, I imagine the scent of “thing” the marble must have, scent that for us exceeds the smell barrier and we can’t feel it through our noses, we can only imagine it.

The teapot so slender, elegant and full of grace. Yes, but all this passes in an instant, and what is left is an old and slightly chipped teapot, ordinary object.

AUTHOR: I don’t know what the climax of this book will be. But, as Angela goes on writing, I’ll recognize it.

ANGELA: “
The Clock
”

You feel in the clock time vibrating. Meanwhile, that is, while I look at the hours of the clock life is evaporating and my heart becomes an object that sparkles. If I were God I would see man, at a distance, as thing. We are of divine construction.

The clock is a torturing object: it seems shackled to time. The second hand, if we kept watching it move mechanically and inexorably, would put us in a frenzy.

“
Iron Guardrail
”

Bad weather.

I, deteriorated.

At the back of the courtyard I saw an iron guardrail in a sorry state, all corroded and peeling with rust. I lingered staring at it, without getting any closer. I didn’t know why I was staring at it with such concentration. And suddenly it seemed that the guardrail was looking at me. It was tall and rose with an intensity of thing. I felt consecrated. Afterwards I gave a deep sigh with my eyes shut, and I opened them again as if I had been sleeping and finally awoke, forgetting my dream, I awoke arriving from very far within myself. I breathed deeply and looked once again at the slender rail. And as I looked I saw that that haughty thing was nothing, it wasn’t looking at me, and would cross another century.

AUTHOR: The process that Angela has for writing is the same process as the act of dreaming: what starts forming are images, colors, acts, and especially an atmosphere of dreams that resembles a color and not a word. She doesn’t know how to explain herself. All she knows is how to do and to do without understanding herself.

ANGELA: “
The Car
”

The photographer Francis Giacobetti, of the magazine
Lui
, spends all of his working hours taking nude portraits of the most beautiful girls in and around Paris.

He was asked, in an article about nudes published in the latest
L’Express
, what he most liked photographing, above all else? “Not women, no. Trucks. They’re beautiful, trucks . . .”

The red scream.

The scarlet-red car let out a purple howl. That “thing” had a horn. And it screamed calling the attention of passers-by. And of God. That “thing” has coils, it has rubber, it has a radio.

AUTHOR: Angela sometimes writes phrases that have absolutely nothing to do with what she’d been discussing. I think these unexpected interferences are like electric static that interferes and gets mixed up with the music on the radio. The electrical currents in the air simply stick to her. And if that happens it’s because she doesn’t know how to write, she writes everything, without selecting. I myself, if I’m not careful, sometimes pick up some electrical interference and suddenly start talking about an orange tractor. The tractor comes to mind because I’m unintentionally plagiarizing Angela.

ANGELA: Example of a phrase that’s enigmatic and completely hermetic like a closed thing: “calibrating tires.” Those words delight and seduce me. To calibrate is to give caliber, isn’t it? Yes. So when I see a sign on a truck reading: “Inflammable” — then I am filled with glory.

A mobile crane mounted on a Scania-Vabis chassis and with an 18 – 22 ton capacity. It’s the “Iron Giraffe,” originally called “Hudra Truck 18/22-T and which is being manufactured in Brazil. Initially, the production schedule estimates three monthly units increasing to five, next year, with great export possibilities.”

And so I see that the crane will have children and one day will populate the earth. Which will be a world of objects. But the objects no longer want to be objects. It’s the revolt of the “thing.” The catastrophe of things is a noisy racket in the air. Only for the supersonic.

AUTHOR: A fatal mechanization makes Angela see “things” more and not human beings.

ANGELA: “
Record Player
”

On the record the black circumvolutions avoid mixing with other magic circles by a hair: and from there comes the aura of music. I have a musical aura. The record I pick it up and run the hairs of my arm across and the hairs stand on end. Because its aura touches mine.

“
Butterfly
”

The mechanics of the butterfly. First it’s the egg. Later the egg breaks and a caterpillar comes out. This caterpillar is hermetically sealed. It isolates itself atop a leaf. Inside it is a cocoon. But the caterpillar is opaque. Until it starts turning transparent. Its aura shines, it fills with colors. Then from the caterpillar that opens itself there emerge small fragile legs. At that the entire butterfly comes out. Then the butterfly slowly opens its wings above the leaf — and takes off fluttering, light, happy, a little crazy. Its life is brief but intense. Its mechanics are higher mathematics.

I saw a black butterfly. It cursed me.

AUTHOR: She turns a butterfly into an epic. And she’s unorthodox.

ANGELA: Living is almost intolerable.

I see death smiling in your beautiful face like the fatal stain of the face of Christ on Veronica’s veil.

If we could stay quiet — suddenly an egg is born. An alchemical egg. And I’m being born and I’m breaking the dry shell of the egg with my lovely beak. I’m born! I’m born! I’m born!

My soul is racked by desire.

Oh scarlet eggplant, what are you? are you a thing? bitter as life itself. I’m going to try everything I can, I don’t want to keep distant from the world.

AUTHOR: Angela — if she really could write — would give us her rough ideas because she’s incapable of addressing a possible reader with the spontaneous lack of order she uses to write this book. She thinks that contact with the reader can only happen through complicated reasoning.

ANGELA: “
Trash Can
”

The trash can is a luxury. Because who doesn’t have things to put out in the street the things that aren’t any use? and yet we have a container made just for our rubbish. If we threw our trash onto the street it would become a federal problem. Scrap metal is the most beautiful garbage there is.

“I’m clean and don’t smell. But as fate would have it they fill me with filth and dirt. Only mutts understand me. ‘She’ lines me with newspaper:
Jornal do Brasil
. And I unafraid pretend I have no owner. I receive stubbed-out butts of cigarettes. One day I’ll catch fire. At night I’m alone in the dark, empty, left in the corner on the ground. My silence stinks. Woe is me, receptacle of the death of things.”

The number is itself.

The flower is from May 14th.

Numbers . . . are they what’s hidden behind your mysteries, secret effluvia and succulent secretions or, maybe, sibilant and pointed questions without any answers? What do they hide, clouds?

As for the sea. The sea is impossible to believe. Only by imagining it can you manage to see its reality. Only as a possible dream does the sea exist. But the bottomlessness of the sea blossoms inside me with the scare of a scarecrow.

A vase with pale roses already wilting is a phantasmagoric thing that profoundly frightens me when it catches me unawares. They threaten to throw into the air their own aura that becomes a ghost.

And the picture of painted roses gives a smile. I’m afraid of living roses because they are so fragile and dandyish and because they turn yellow. But painted roses they don’t frighten me.

To be alone is a state of being. I learned this from things. It’s obvious, it’s clear that things tend to be alone. But a living room set is so lonely!

The armchair is mute, it’s fat, it’s cozy. It greets every backside like any other. It’s a mother. On the other hand the edge of a table is a fateful weapon. If you were thrown against it, you’d double over in pain. A round table is sly. But it presents no danger: it’s a bit mysterious, it smiles slightly.

AUTHOR: Angela has an enviable quality: she’s chatty when she describes “things,” she seems to bear good news.

ANGELA: You shouldn’t live in luxury. In luxury we become an object that in turn possesses other objects. You only see the “thing” when you live a monastic life or at least a temperate life. The spirit can live on bread and water.

The violin mute thing exhales restrained music but with sleeping eyes. A violin that reaches the paroxysm of piercing sound: the glory of being.

Matchsticks flare restless inside the sealed box, mad for the sexual act that consists of being struck on the black part of the box and transforming into fire. Yet the match does not know that it will catch and burn but a single time.

“
The Jewel
”

It shines. This it without equal. It is always unique. And has sacred rage.

But when it’s a pearl necklace it shines softly like the piety of an Ave Maria. A pearl necklace needs to be in contact with our skin in order to receive our heat. Otherwise it dies. One, two, three, seven, how many pearly eggs of mother-of-pearl? And it ends with the most delicate clasp of diamonds set in white gold.

White gold? it turns pale in terror: threat.

Whereas sun-gold gives itself openly like a glory of love. A long gold chain runs through the fingers like warm water of a brook between sunlit pebbles. Sun-gold doesn’t refuse. But — but, my God, how dangerous is the gold ingot. Men kill for a yellow brick.

A woman sells herself for a diamond. And a greedy one asks for more: she wants a very wide stole of warm mink.

Brilliants are small joys in a shower of children’s laughter. They’re cold little waterfalls in bursts of trembling giggles. Oh how cold. I prefer the word brilliants to diamonds. I’m not sure why: maybe because the word “brilliant” actually seems to shine brilliantly with its flashes of diagonal light, it’s a word that seems not to consist only of itself, of a single brilliant, but to contain a shower of brilliants, like illuminated and transparent eyes. Brilliants are a joy of the earth, they jump about and when still seem like stars. In fact, brilliants are never still: their crystalline light is refractory to immobility. A brilliant lights up any setting and one’s eyes become gently cleared. But a diamond is something chained to the earth, it’s solid, and the word “diamante,” “diamond,” is a bit opaque despite its first two syllables: “dia,” “day.” And the end “amante,” “lover,” reveals a carnal and imperishable love. The brilliant is poetically irresponsible, whereas the diamond-stone is circumspect and stable.

But a brooch is serious. It’s an argument. It leaps into the air like a woman-gazelle. It fastens, it’s weighty, it waits. And when unfastened — everything becomes naked, the curtain falls and the white breasts seem to blush. The brooch is a period.

Exclamations are the dangling earrings that tremble between strands of hair. An earring made of what? made of everything that knows how extremely important it is to shine. Earrings are extremelies. And the earring of a single and modest pearl is the violet of jewels. But diamond earrings fight and utter small cries that frighten me. They quarrel, cruel. An earring of sterling silver is seriousness and a guarantee of great and strict security. A gold earring is any old “this,” it’s a little this without much importance. Unless it’s a round ball of gold: then it’s possession and activity.