Selected Cronicas

PLAYING WITH MERCURY

It always has been and always will be a red-letter day for me when a thermometer gets broken and the silver mercury spills on to the floor, runs a little way and then becomes immobilised and impregnable. I have just broken another one and I try to retrieve the mercury with the help of a sheet of paper which I cautiously slip underneath. But it resists all my efforts. No sooner do I think I have succeeded than it disintegrates between my fingers like damp fireworks. Not unlike what apparently happens to us humans after death, when the energy escapes from our soul and merges with the atmosphere. How hopeless trying to collect that sensitive liquid. It refuses to be handled and maintains its integrity even when divided into innumerable little bubbles: each tiny bubble is a separate entity, whole and entire, even when divided. One only has to prod one of those bubbles very gently for it to be sucked in by another next to it and together they form a larger and rounder bubble. Ever since childhood I have had this same dream whenever I break a thermometer. I dream of thousands of broken thermometers and of an endless stream of dense, lunar, cold mercury spilling all over. And there I am, serious and absorbed, as I play with the living matter of this vast expanse of silver metal. I imagine myself sinking into this pool of mercury which has escaped from the thermometers. As I sink deeper, thousands of bubbles are released, one by one, thick and impenetrable. Mercury is an impregnable substance. In what sense impregnable? I cannot explain. I refuse to explain. There is nothing to explain. Mercury is impregnable and that is that. It seems to possess a cerebral coolness which controls its reaction. I feel as if I am in love with mercury but mercury feels nothing for me. There is none of that submissiveness one expects from material things. For mercury has a life of its own. Coping with mercury is not like coping with other material things. It submits to.no one. And no one is allowed to handle it. Our soul uses our body in order to avoid being contaminated by life and this tiny gleaming nucleus is the ultimate refuge of mankind. Wild beasts also possess this shining nucleus which helps to keep them completely wild and alive.

I see that I have moved on from mercury to the mystery of wild beasts. The fact is that mercury — which constitutes lunar matter — causes me to think, leads me from one truth to another, until I come to the nucleus of that purity and integrity which each of us possesses. Who? I ask. Who has not played with a broken thermometer?