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« The hidden face of the moon and the hidden one of Being... in where is the difference ? »
Along an hiking trail in the Alps, linking Switzerland and Italy, scree slopes at the border gave the paradoxal impression of being on the moon and to be deeply bound to Earth. Etel Adnan's poetry anthology, 'Le destin va ramener les étés sombres', really echoed this series to me, or vice versa.
« The universe resembles the mind in its spherical appearance. Thoughts and meteoric rockets pass through it. Space without stability, space evolving in space. Propulsion of the self out of itself. Chair left to the winds. Heartbeat. Without the sun, the world would never have existed. Oh, the steep slope, from the season to its effects! »
« Ancient rivers drift into ancient memories. They create watery fields the way music transforms breathing air into a subject of contemplation for the ears. Flat lands. One drop of water added to another can make an angel appear. The moon tears apart the illuminated clouds and reigns alone.
I want to walk in mountainous countries. Some nations are sitting and crying in front of screens larger than their borders. Their brains are starting to fall apart. I listen. All this will of course be perceived as silence, in the heart of the storms, under the explosion of the skies. »
« Light shows its impatience by creating shadows. We project our longings on the horizon’s precarious line, and separate words from the objects they’re meant to represent. The moon doesn’t speak only of our languages.
Life concentrates on the mind’s surface : it either accelerates time, or discontinues it. The storm is wiping out visibility. Matter skids out of itself. In this annihilation, only the forest survives, and the streams that are running through. Chaos in dormant dwellings.
At the confluence of mind and matter, or thought and environment, there is a continuous spark. Stunned by the relentless passing of the afternoon, it's impossible to see the beach. I'm carrying years of wandering on my back. I'd like to get rid of them.
And then there's the moon. Its existence raises a crucial question : does Being always conceal a hidden face, like it? The sky is too vast to imagine its expanse. The solar system is therefore relatively intimate. »
« There are about a hundred billion stars in the Milky way, as many as there are neurons in our brain. We have perhaps twenty-four thousand billion kilometers to cover, to the first star outside our star system, to find an object as complex as the one standing on our shoulders. »
« The horizon asks not to be pursued. We cannot know who has been whistling all night, because we've lost the property title of the sky. Ghosts have no power to compromise with the past ; from now on, uncertainty slips through our fingers. »
Notes from the poetry anthology of Etel Adnan, « Le destin va ramener les étés sombres », Éd. Points, 2022
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