Selected Cronicas

SUBMISSION TO THE PROCESS

The process of living consists of errors — most of them essential — of courage and indolence, the despair and hope of inert awareness, of constant feeling (not thought) which leads nowhere, leads absolutely nowhere, and suddenly what you thought was nothingness turns out to be your own terrifying contact with the fabric of life. And that moment of recognition (akin to revelation) must be accepted with the greatest innocence, with the same innocence with which one is born. The process is difficult? But that is like saying that the extremely capricious and natural manner in which a flower is made is difficult. (Mummy, said the little boy, the sea is beautiful, green and blue, and with waves! It’s all naturalized! Nobody made it!) The nagging impatience (standing beside a plant to watch it grow yet without seeing anything) is not in relation to the thing itself, but to this monstrous patience (the plant grows at night). As if one were to say: ‘I cannot bear to be patient for another second’, ‘the patience of the watchmaker puts my nerves on edge’, etc.: it is an impatient patience. But the greatest burden of all is torpid patience: an ox pulling the plough.