In a presence already dissolved[excerpts from the Journals of Danielle Collobert, 1960-1961, translated by Norma Cole.]1960 January "She was sitting by the bridge on the bridge a lot of people were watching the barges unload suddenly the rock she was sitting on started to roll - it was a big granite slab block She yelled - everyone turned to look at her - The rock picked up momentum nothing could stop it - the people couldn't understand - Little by little she leaned her upper body forward - until she was laid out on the slab – Simultaneously she felt a great emptiness inside a hole a descent - No one moved from the bridge captivated by the movement..." I don't ever want to learn anything again - just people - I really only get close to them in bed - their nakedness - essential – to understand - grasp by means of gestures - looks - more than with words - already so many men ... February I've been walking for a long time – it's 9:30 - it's cold I rarely see streets or people at this hour in this neighborhood the houses are mute – people pass quickly - closed walking tightly – don't know how I got to this neighborhood - slept at J.'s and walked all the way here – like it follows logically - strange looking at a long and empty day – nervous – there's that exhibit at the Musee d'art moderne to kill time, not out of love - that cold strange room last night - seeing myself again in all the bedrooms - dislocated – blurred – bodiless inside those walls – maybe a little heat remaining – sudden silence – cold – and all of a sudden solitude returns – bad – watching the kids in the square just now – retrieving childhood sensations – earth and water – fuzzy sensations – a smell – scattered images – the dining room door ajar and my grandfather in bed – face to the wall – women sitting around the kitchen table speaking quietly – and weeping – reds and pinks – the boy in blue – on a hook hung from the balcony of the house at one corner of the square – and the Germans all over – the hook – the garden – the entry – the doorway with masses of red fuschias – garden masses of apples – one evening in the "house in back" eating pink rat poison and shrieking – terror – flowers – frost on the window – feet warming at the stove – scorched socks – after school– the storms and wind in the pines at Compostal – the fire in the living room hearth – listing images when really the smells are what returns most vividly – roasted coffee – detergent – overripe pears in the loft – smell of wood and wet ground – March Such a strange night – on the Quai des Fleurs – I've been living here for a few days – very nice apartment – They're sleeping – the table faces the window where I write – the Seine – the lights – water – calm came back – like glancing crystal in the water – rising and falling – as real as my hand – my face in the pane – the Seine's reflections disrupting the lamplight's opacity – like crossing dream with reality – and then a car passes – from light to opacity – disappearance – tranquility – very rare peacefulness – after days of emptiness – empty enough to put off getting up – because of the emptiness itself – and after – completely futile efforts to fill in – why despite appearances I go to such lengths to achieve this feeling emptiness – of discomfort – as though every gesture –every movement were bringing me nearer to death – the sensation of emptiness disappeared in that orgasmic moment – I have possibly never been so far into that solitude as these last months – it still might not be enough – there is a vague form of stability left here – of security – some doubt about what I can stand – more wandering – add leaving the country – breaking all bonds – or whatever – being broke in a country I don't know – maybe – probably an illusion – equating being alone in a room for days – and going off somewhere – April Departure – tomorrow – real escape – I'm going to Tunisia – calm – Tunis 1 here with no break – already the same life – I go to cafés – I make love – I go to films – I talk to people – no distance – I've already been here since forever – but still it's the East – the light – the colors – the beauty – at least this: I have new eyes – senses beginning to function again as though after a long illness – this morning very early – in the village – scarcely daybreak – through the grillwork on the window – some noises in the covered streets – after making love all night – body heavy and hot – impression of tiredness – of well-being – H. motionless – head on my belly – almost cool – a smell I couldn't place – almonds and oranges – old food – and then suddenly in the silence – a very long sound – very low – the slow modulation of the muezzin – extraordinary beauty – now here – in the café – seated on matting – they're playing cards –the patron sitting on a chair by the stove closes his eyes – head thrown back a little – he is tall and lean – looks high as a kite – they aren't paying any attention to me – I'm fine here – it's raining out – sound of rain on the steps – Wednesday ran into R. the building's terrace and the little hut below – just room for a bed – when I came back at 4 – air cool – the whole town below – early movement in the direction of the station – to the left – the quality of the air – especially that – staying there a long time looking down at the town – September Saturday – evening – a café – I'm far away – toward Aubervilliers – I walked a long time – spent the last few nights walking – here the old neighborhoods– the houses – hallways staircases – little courtyards – what goes on in the daytime – warehouses – workshops – people – their night deserted – a few lights farther off – near the trees – I'm cold – bitter taste of cigarettes – voices – a woman singing – an accomplished liar's voice – slightly hoarse – sad – a little raw – go back and sleep – get loaded – no – stay – stay up – nurture this – thing that returned by chance – the silence inside – November he just left – when he leaves I never know when I'll see him again – always chance encounters – or nearly – today I asked myself what little errors we've let come between us – I don't know yet – I can barely guess – why such tenderness in his gestures – after – where there is usually distance – don't be taken in by tenderness – protect yourself from it – I'm sucked in too easily – his presence I already live too much in these days – not enough resistance now – or irony – December I am calm – finally without anxiety – a certain balance – Y. – circle around his presence – no more severing – or waiting – calm – a kind of delight – also – being with him – finally this is a story I like – I feel good – but when I'm like this I don't do anything – unable to write a word – I only write in an anxious state (oh sure)* – or in times like that – ideas for novels arrive – the story of the port for example – stupid – the novel is basically a pacific creation – that releases what's essential – sensation of well-being allows time to stretch out – necessary to the novel – whereas the anxiety produces something strong – complete – at once – no going beyond – (?)* momentary fixity – in the anxious state – totally out of it – what am I doing here – with these kids – feels like sweet and well-behaved girls – never been so isolated in the middle of a group – almost peculiar – get out of here at the first possible moment – get away from it – before the end of resistance – of rebellion – before boredom – exhaustion 1961 February Algeria 2 – as if this is really the beginning for me – Said September Tonight I'm starting over – after these parenthetical months – for them – go real slow – like the first time going out after being locked up for ages – tonight calm at last – window open – a little wind – gentle – feeling my bathrobe – music below – I just picked up K.'s journal – always the way to get back to work when it's not happening – Kafka or Beckett – to start up again – nothing is finished – the problem hasn't been resolved – but I'm at the end of my rope – still struggling with it – because it would be easier to keep going with them than pick up my life where it left off – these months speak years – many new things – to be completely current with present events – living the news as it happens – with no time lag – now it's difficult to become nothing but a spectator again – what counted was the immediate – objective justification was impossible – for what I was doing – theoretical questions useless – when I make theory for others – I end up not believing it – immediate action justified immediately in its entirety – uncomfortable position but real – for months no writing – impossible to reconcile the two – walk paying attention – I've lost sensation – closeness of the outside world around me – I'm not connecting with things any more – could be irreparable loss – trying now to recover sensations – objects for instance – the table's smoothness – its color – my hand on the paper – it's raining – that helps me – I feel better – more differentiated from things – from the outside – blur already – October continuing – I'm alone in the gallery space – no options – walls – I touch the walls – I press myself against them – I'll lean from one to the other – I stayed in the corner opposite for ten minutes – now I'm in the middle of the room on a chair – writing on my lap – the empty space all around – spinning – what to do – yell – call out – for someone to come – wait – slow death – explosion inside my head – words – invent words – fast – absence – non- sense of words – I can't – December waiting – days – time passes filled with little things – cling to the slightest incident – the most expected event – the most foreseeable with hope for some hidden thing concealed inside the opacity of stillness – I can't because I know what the end of waiting is – the possibility of radical change – definitive – there are lots of examples of such possibilities but they crumble before any obstacle – the real presence of people – of objects – the world – the margin between the image of suicide and reality's uncertainty is too great – story limited in time – will end on a specific date – with departure of a train – wonderful impression of clean – retreat – irreparable – it's there in a presence already dissolved – almost weightless – if he knew – Footnotes: 1. Although placed in Tunis this passage actually describes the village of Sidi Bou Said and the café "des Nattes." 2. At this time D.C. became a part of a network supporting the F.L.N. [National Liberation Front]. Bio: Norma Cole is a visual artist, poet and translator. Her most recent publications are Desire & Its Double (Instress 1998) and Spinoza in Her Youth (Abacus: February 1999). With Stacy Doris, she edited Raddle Moon 16, a special issue of new French writing in translation. go to this issue's table of contents
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