With eyes closed (bis)

Sit­ting on my yoga mat, I look out the win­dow onto a patch of sky. A tree, in the dis­tance, taller than all the hous­es, shiv­ers with the breath that sur­rounds it. And I close my eyes, open them again, the mer­ry-go-round con­tin­ues while I try to relax in vain.

I observe the immo­bil­i­ty of the two arm­chairs in front of me. I take note of the beige of the walls. I lis­ten to almost always the same music album ambio-instru­men­tal as if I had to close the least orig­i­nal­i­ty because this music soothes me. No, it makes me more silent, wipes the sweat from my thoughts, dries my existence.

Moved by chance, I get up, stand straight, close my eyes. If I try to stand on one foot, I imme­di­ate­ly get dizzy and have to look out through the win­dow again to regain my bal­ance. With both feet on the ground, that is fine. I close once more my eyes, stretch my arms above me, expand my lungs and bend over, reach­ing my toes with my fin­gers. I bow my knees, slow­ly come up, dig­ging in my abdomen. With my eyes thus closed, I per­ceive more my body, my breath, my existence.

All that I can under­take with both feet on the ground is accli­ma­tized by my vol­un­tary blind­ness. Still, if I try either a spread­ing of the legs or an unusu­al piv­ot­ing, I have to fight against a clum­si­ness that I try as well to explore.

My fif­teen-minute pseu­do yoga inter­pre­ta­tion is a sad and peace­ful game. It hush­es the anger of my bore­dom, a some­times dizzy­ing frus­tra­tion that I am use­less right now, that there is noth­ing left to say or think.

Yet, I read a lot dur­ing this short vaca­tion. My eyes hurt, odd­ly also enough my left shoul­der. Every­thing could change, it seems to me, soon. My real­i­ty appears blurred and imprecise.

And I can’t help it.

I don’t want to dis­cuss it.

I am afraid.

And I pull myself together.

I close my eyes again, con­tin­u­ing my med­i­ta­tive lis­ten­ing to this haunt­ing, sweet music, a sad or com­fort­ing bal­lad, on the del­i­cate thread of real­i­ty or truth. Obliv­ion or pres­ence, it’s all the same when you think about it. The dream or the awak­en­ing is the same brain that smokes of it good.

Our soul, the one that only we know, is indeed a burn­ing fire, a source of inex­haustible wis­dom. It is so aston­ish­ing that the heat that emanates from it smells both of Shiv­a’s sul­phur and of the san­dal­wood of infinity.

Math­e­mat­ics, these days, makes us dis­cov­er the infi­nite and immortality.

My closed eyes remain a bot­tom­less abyss with­out end.

I can­not do any­thing about it.

I dis­cuss it with the spir­its that haunt me.

I am not real­ly afraid.

Frag­ile, evanes­cent, my soul.

It must be the season.

=====

When I pub­lished this text, I real­ized that I was writ­ing a bit of the same thing almost a year ago to the day.