JACQUES DUPINThe night awaits us, fills us, again we must disappoint its waiting, in order
that it become the night.
7When walking becomes impossible, it is the foot that shatters, not the path.
You were deceived. The light is simple. And the hills near. If, by mistake, I knock
at your door tonight, do not open it. Do not open it yet. The absence of your face
is my only darkness.
8To climb you, and having climbed you—when the light is no longer supported
by words, when it totters and crashes down—climb you again. Another crest,
another lode.
Ever since my fears came of age, the mountain has needed me. Has needed my
chasms, my bonds, my step.
9Vigils on the promontory. Not to go down. To be silent no longer. Neither
passion nor possession. Comings and goings in full view, within the narrow
space, which is su≈cient. Vigils on the promontory to which I have no access.
But from which I have looked down, always. And drawn. Happiness. Indestruc-
tible happiness.
—paul auster
Begin Like Tearing
Begin like tearing the sheet in whose folds you watched yourself sleeping. The
act of writing as rupture, and the cruel engagement of the spirit and the body in a
necessary succession of ruptures, drifts and burnings. Throw it all down on the
table, with all its fight and breath, and consider this gift of self an imperceptible
displacement that is almost of indi√erence to the universal balance. Tear, restore,
and so renew. In the forest we are nearer to the woodcutter than to the lonely
wanderer. No innocent contemplation. No high trees threaded with rays and
birdsong, but blocks of potential firewood. All is given to us, but to be driven, to
be breached, in one sense destroyed—and to destroy us.
—stephen romer