No one There

[Guest guest]

At the age of fourteen, like any self-respecting adolescent, I got it

through my head that the color of a thing belongs, not to that thing,

but to me.

 

Since then, I've traveled, in the same direction, a long long

way.

And the world still stands!

 

Take a look inside your head. Ask yourself: am I there, towards the

middle, an inch behind the forehead? or lower, over by the left ear?

or all the way back?... Obviously, you're nowhere. And quickly it

gets terribly strange, to be nowhere. And what seems still more

bloody strange is that not being there changes nothing, that in the

vacant half-light of your skull, thoughts continue to circulate—

yours, a life, welling up, a mysterious vision, seen—yours, as if the

little man who wasn't there, whom you've identified with, weren't in

reality all the time in on it! as if, from the beginning, a vulgar

self-passenger had not (by assuming the badge, of course) usurped the

conductor's identity! as if acquaintance could still be made with the

aforesaid person, with the real subject of this thought, of this

life, of this vision!

 

Stephen Jourdain

 

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