15.
You said you had no clock. You don't. But does time exist without a clock? It does. Differently. It lives in the body. Aches gather in bone, muscles stiffen in the morning, you see new white in your hair in the mirror.
It lives in light. In the cooling of tea, in hunger arriving and departing. Like tides. The body has its own moon, one that pulls, that releases, in whose rising and falling blood races and stills. The body itself is a clock. There is no key to stop it. Even if you wanted to stop it, there isn't one.
But time exists. How do you know? By tea. The tea was hot, then it was not. You did nothing, cooled nothing—the tea cooled itself. In time. That is how you know time exists. Not by a clock, but by tea. By its cooling. The way grey deepens. The way the body stiffens, grows rigid. The way bread hardens and dries. The way silence thickens, becomes heavy.
Not by a clock. By a cup, by bread, by the body.
Time needs no clock, and neither do you. Time simply leaves its marks, quietly. On things, on you. Whether you count or don't count, it matters nothing to time. Don't count.
Time exists. It doesn't flow past, though—you do, you pass through time the way a fish moves through water. The fish thinks the water is moving; the water doesn't move. The fish does.
And when the fish stops, when you stop, in your chair, only then do you suddenly feel the stillness of the water—the stillness that was always there, which you didn't notice because you were swimming through it. The vast stillness of time, which you took for motion because you yourself were moving through it. Now you are still, and stillness is everything.
The room is stillness. Grey is stillness. The cup in your hand slowly cooling. That is stillness, finally showing itself to that fish, the one that has stopped swimming and sits.
In a room, time is different—like a diving bell. Outside the sea moves; inside, you. The time outside cannot touch you. The time inside can only be measured in breath, and breath measures nothing—it simply continues.
Your time, not clock time. Body time. No clock hands, no bells, no announcements. Morning and evening cannot be told apart, like looking through an aquarium's glass. Only the light in the window changes, slowly. From grey to deeper grey, from deep to dark, from dark to grey again. Like a wheel. That much division, that much partition. Time's own, not imposed by humans, not artificial.
Time shows itself in its own way, in this room, where you sit in your chair by the window. You watch the light change. Grey to grey. Truly, it is no change at all, but you can call it change if you must—what else is there to call it?
Sometimes, in the room, time stops; say it does. It doesn't truly stop, but it seems to. The light doesn't change, the sea doesn't stir, the gulls don't call, the rope on the mast doesn't creak—all is silent.
And in that silence you too become silent. Your body too, your mind. Everything stops at once. Only for a moment. Silence spreads like cloth, into every fold, covers you. Then the room becomes a picture. You too.
And there you are in your chair. You're not breathing—say you're not. You are, of course; your body is. But you are someone else, the one inside. The one who watches—she is not breathing. She is still. For a moment, say a moment, though moment is measure, and there is no measure here. Still. Utterly still.
And in that stillness, something. What? Not thought, not feeling, not understanding. Something else. It has no name. The thing before naming, before words come, before knowing arrives.
# The Machinery of Mind
Something before the machinery of mind starts, before its gears turn, before its wheels engage. In the gap. Between one breath and the next. Between one grey and another grey.
And this is not peace, understand—not peace. Something rawer than peace. Something old. What existed before habit arrived. Raw, open. Before the numbness came, before the anesthetic. Raw truth. Without doing, without going, without naming. Just being. Being emptily.
Not comforting, not pleasant. Not what the word “being” conjures—rest, presence, home. But being, raw being, without the numbness. This is a kind of anguish. Very low, very continuous. Like the kettle just before it begins to hum. Tremor in the bones, in the blood, in the nerves.
The anguish of consciousness. That which knows it exists, the pain of its own being, and the inability to stop. There is no cause for this pain, therefore no cure. The condition itself is the pain. Not a symptom of the condition—the condition itself.
The fundamental note of existence. You hear it now, in the gap, between one breath and the next. It was always there. Beneath doing, beneath going, beneath habit. That pain. Playing a single note. Low, unbroken.
You never heard it because the noise of living always drowned it out. Now living has stopped, the noise has stopped, and the note remains. You hear it. Clearly. Unmistakably.
The note that says: you are, and this is all. It is not enough, never enough. But it must suffice. Because this is all there is.
Something. There. Then not.
There was, it seems.
And knowing arrives. Naming wants to come, fails. There is no name for what was in the gap. Before knowing, before naming, before you.
That thing existed. It has gone. It will come again, surely. In another gap, between this breath and the next. When you are not waiting, when you have forgotten how to wait, it will come. It always comes when forgotten. And it leaves when remembered.
This is its nature. To be when you are not. To be absent when you are.
A thing of the gap. You will never grasp it. And it will never leave you alone.
The whole thing can be said in one breath. A cry. Breath in. Silence. Breath out. Another cry. That is all.
The first cry. Breath in. A pause. Breath out. The last cry.
Between the first cry and the last, say, thirty seconds. Say, a life. The same thing, the same length, the same event. No difference whether you stretch it or hold it tight.
The cry that begins is the cry that ends. The breath that comes in must go out. The silence in between—that is life. That is the pause. Between breath coming in and going out.
There you are. In the pause, in the silence, between breath arriving and departing.
A breath that was never yours. On loan. The air lent itself to your lungs. For the duration of the pause, no more. That is life.
When the pause ends, the breath leaves. The cry comes. The end. As the beginning was: a cry and breath coming in.
The whole thing. In thirty seconds, in a lifetime. The same. A cry. A breath. Silence. A breath. A cry. This much. Always this much. Nothing more. Just this.
16.
Walk at night before sleeping. Not through the whole room, but through one narrow strip. Wedged between bed and wall. Nine paces, say, nine. Not counting them—your body counts, your feet know the floor. Which board has a groove worn into it, your feet know. In the dark too. Eyes closed too.
Your feet are older than you. Your feet remember what you have forgotten. Where the nail-head protrudes, your feet know. This strip bears the mark of your footsteps. That passage has grown glossy with wear. The rest of the floor is dull. Like a beggar’s.
# The Strip
You have left the whole world behind and kept only a mat, and on that mat the moon rises, on that mat the world exists.
You are both spectator and actor. The stage is empty. The chairs are arranged. There are no spectators. The lights are on. Yet the performance continues. Walking into darkness, never to return. Always the same strip, always the same number. Counting footsteps, as you always count. Go forward, turn, come back, turn, go forward.
The sound of feet, on the floor, on the board, in the darkness. Soft, very soft, but there. The only sound in the room besides the sea and the heartbeat. The feet measure the strip on the board. You have measured it so many times the board knows. The board has worn thin at that strip, more than anywhere else. A path has formed on the floor. Night after night, the walking has worn it down, step by step. The board has grown light there, thin, smoother than the sides.
The strip is yours. Not the room, not the city, but this strip is yours. The path of pacing between bed and wall, that is yours. You have worn it down. In the wood, in your feet, every night, every night, before sleep.
You could pace elsewhere. The room is larger than the strip. You could go from door to window, from chair to table. But you do not. A strip is a strip. And the strip is enough. You might lose yourself with the whole world; having the strip, you remain. This way and that way, in this much lies your kingdom, in this much your freedom.
From the first night it has been this. Your feet chose it, without telling you. Your feet chose it—forward, backward, and the turning at both ends. Perfect turning, on the heel, tireless, reversing direction, never breaking the rhythm. Turn, return, turn, return.
The feet have their own dance, their own geometry, their own devotion, their own rhythm. To that strip which has worn itself into the floor. You are only the instrument of your feet in pacing, the body’s instrument feeding it, the heart’s instrument thrumming. You serve only. The feet pace through you, through your body, on the strip, in the darkness.
Sometimes during the pacing you hear a voice. Not the voice of the skull, another voice. From the wall, from below, from where mother is or was. Mother’s voice. Calling your name, or not your name, a name that was yours, before the name drowned to the bottom.
The voice comes from the wall, from below, from the darkness. Will it not end for you? Churning everything in your wretched head. Will it not end? Mother’s voice asking from the other side. The wall, which is floor, which is earth, which is world, which is the bottom, where she is, from the other side of it. Mother speaking through the floor, through the earth. Will it not end for you?
And the answer. No. It will never end. The turning will not stop, the pacing will not stop, the walking along the strip will not cease. Go forward, come back. Churning everything in your wretched head. Mother knew, didn’t she, the wretched head. Mother saw from the other side, from below. Where mothers go after they go, from where they call if called.
The voice, through the floor. Will it not end? No. Never. It will not end. The turning will continue. Like pacing, like breathing, like going on. Until it stops, the pacing stops, and the lying begins, and the body becomes what it becomes at night. A landscape.
At night the body is different. By day the body is a vehicle, a conveyance. It takes you from bed to chair, from chair to door, from door to harbor, and back. By day the body works, let’s say, does the body’s work, carries, bears, transports, keeps going somehow.
But at night? Ah, at night! The body becomes something else entirely. It becomes a landscape, a terrain. You lie within it, as within a country.
Each mind has its own geography—mountains and valleys of its own, its own weather, its own seasons of warmth and cold.