Transcendence.
a written sketch | an encountered text
sketch⬩text
monthly on The Matterhorn
SKETCH: The following is a word sketch for a work of fiction.
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Transcendence.
Whilst thinking of what to write this morning, the word took over my soul. I glance at the purple tulips, dying before they have opened up. Closed like lips pursed against the fumes that may enter them. Eternally preserved in this nascent shape. The deep violet moves toward black, threatening to stain my fingers in the transition to waste.
My son noticed it last night at ‘tea’ whilst waiting for his ‘pudding.’ I have adopted these British words as part of my family. We are playing at life. Everything is make believe.
Before me are cold, dark windows. I finished yoga before dawn, but the lights are now on. Three pendulum bulbs hanging just high enough to be out of view except for their reflections in the glass. They are stuck in a forever vibration and silent reverberation, somehow refracted in the glass. Little eggs of light — three of them.
My face is blocked by the wood beam before me. I can just make out a hazy glow in the apartment across our shared lawn. Surely, they can all see me, maskless. We shirked curtains, not wanting to block the full joy of the world from reaching us. This choice made in the wake of the pandemic. It is all or nothing. The black-out blinds can at once shield us from any exterior.
But this morning, every morning, I am watched as I write. Or so I imagine. Of the five or six flats at level, there must be someone else who has discovered my morning routine. Someone who wakes with the comfort of knowing I am already there, thinking with fingers. Seeking transcendence.
What if they don’t see me? What if I am really all alone?
My communication is for myself, then for those elsewhere, maybe. Is it enough to reach just a few of you? Not with this small observation, but with the novels, if they don’t sell, if they are never published?
I think it’s freedom.
These words may not last over eons of time, or even my lifetime. We shall all die. And sometime in the future, the Earth will explode or implode…somehow we will all be destroyed.
In the meantime, we can make art. And we don’t have to worry if somebody reads it or sees it. I feel a warmth in the words and the spaces between them. The act of creation will remain the same.
So I continue…
The transcendence is that it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I write and I enjoy it. What matters is that I try to make the world better through a few words. My world, another reader’s, another artist’s…slowly and surely our energies will merge with that of the universe, which is eternal.
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TEXT: I share with you a recent encounter you might enjoy.
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This book was recommended in a little bookshop in Mulhouse, France, which is close to Basel. I took the train there for a cheaper haircut and a day with French swirling around me.
At the dawn of another international move and changes to my work life, I find myself taking stock of what I value so that I may consider the ways I spend my time. One of the pleasures high on my list is engaging with the French language and culture, whether in an immersive experience or through other means, such as reading French authors in French. In many ways, I feel a deep connection — as if speaking French brings out a part of my identity that is otherwise masked.
So in the wake of creating and reassessing these value-lists, I’ve decided to spend more time reading and watching films in French (again). I feel the fluency coming back to me as I let go of the need to look up every word or grammatical construction I’m unsure of, and I feel that hidden part of myself emerge.
Ce Matin-Là [That Morning] indicates a time when the protagonist, Clara, has a sudden block to walk away from everyday life in search of existential answers and move through some of the latent grief from her father’s death. It is an arbitrary moment. Clara’s car won’t start. It is the catalyst for her to pause and walk away from the routines that cover up her deeper thoughts.
Like many good French novels, not a whole lot happens in this narrative. There are internal discoveries and resolutions mixed with philosophical musings about the world and those around her. The prose is poetic and what I can only describe as natural. It feels unaffected, from some internal place in the author that is simply a part of her consciousness.
Elle regarde le soleil monter et pâlir dans le ciel, et elle se dit qu’elle a peut-être trouvé sa façon à elle de se façonner une nouvelle vie, elle espère le faire avant que la matière en fusion ne se fige.
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She watches the sun rise and fade in the sky, and she tells herself that maybe she has found a new way of living a new life, she hopes to do so before the lava freezes. [my translation, p. 178]
Gaëlle Josse is a poet, novelist, and journalist living in Paris. She has won the EU Prize for Literature and is an active member of French literary circles (here appearing on La Grande Librairie). I apologize if you don’t read French; as far as I know, there is no English translation of this novel. You can find some translations of her work, including the novel The Last Days of Ellis Island.
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What are you reading/viewing or writing/creating? Let’s hear it.
Thanks for being here.
p.s. I wrote this in early spring 2024 whilst still living in Basel.
“What matters is that I write and I enjoy it. What matters is that I try to make the world better through a few words.”
— Loved these lines! I also really enjoyed the piece as a whole. :)
I think about this quite often, that the making must be enough because the made may never be seen, heard, discovered by anyone else for a million reasons beyond our control; more and more, too, as more and more of us seek this way of engaging with art, life, people - as many reasons as artists - and there must be better reasons and some greater measure of success than money or fame.