A line every minute.

This is the constraint which you have given yourself.

An attempt to exhaust yourself. 

How many minutes does it have, your patience?

And the truth is that you had thought of these first five lines yesterday : a not so bad idea, you told yourself, really not so bad. 

And so, you had to wait five minutes before you could permit yourself to write sur le vif.

You see now that it isn’t exactly a line that you express with each minute.

It’s rather a phrase that comes to you, sometimes brief, sometimes a bit longer.

You ask yourself how many of these phrases you have in your thoughts this evening. 

 

You are in the street, you tell yourself.

This street, it is the train which you take to return to the place you call chez toi this summer.

La beauté est dans la rue, you remember.

The street, it is the train –or the path– that you follow?

La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait. 

But, in truth, it is the train that cries in this moment…around you, nonetheless.

The train, it is all that there is inside of this vehicle…and it is also the thread.

Did you miss a minute?

It’s imperative that you are always attentive to the hour. 

 

Now, you have the feeling that you don’t have enough time to write it all.

Or, perhaps, it’s your incapacity to say without reflecting that prevents you?

And, if you have to go to the restroom, you ask yourself…what would become of this project then?

If you leave your backpack, which has followed you through multiple countries and for multiple years now, with the man that is seated across from you, would you still find it there upon your return?

You find that you don’t even have time to think of anything other than this endeavour. 

Either, you wait for the next minute to arrive in order to say something, or you find that there is not enough time to say it.

 

You will miss the mountains, this beautiful scene in which you’ve lost yourself for the past day. 

Their height, their green, their liveliness (they live, you think)…these giants which remind you that the human race still rests so small. 

The humility which you feel in front of all their grandeur. 

There are no mountains where you are going now…can you even have this feeling of chez toi without them?

Already, there are less and less of them and you feel how the sadness has begun to take you.

You have missed two minutes.

Is it worth it to regain them?

Perhaps, you have simply miscounted. 

 

You start your next thought again with the next minute.

 

It is nearly the countryside once more…the fields, the yellow…less of the green and you lose the forests which gave you a fleeting moment of happiness.

You do not like yellow.

Yellow, it is a colour near death.

The train slows without warning…you did not hear the name of the next stop. 

It’s broken, you think…of coure, this misfortune comes for you.

Can you write if the train does not move…they are linked after all, your very thoughts and the rolling of the train.

Perhaps, this is the moment to see if your backpack would remain after all…

 

The train breathes again!

But you are late, the minutes run away from you.

You are hungry, but you cannot think of anything that you would like to eat, except perhaps the well-aged cheese that waits for you in your fridge. 

This cheese which you have saved from waste, in doing your part as the good neighbour which takes the food of others who no longer want it. 

Good cheese, salted.

In fact, you are not even hungry…it is your soul which you find emptier than your stomach. 

 

You are thirsty, but you are afraid to let yourself go.

But it’s that, isn’t it, which inspires the writing you seek?

You seek to write without prevention to the very moment of exhaustion, but always following this regime which you have given yourself.

You ask yourself how much more you might have written if you hadn’t limited yourself to one. 

 

You look at the sun, how it paints the canvas of this countryside in which the street finds itself. 

The street that moves you and that moves with you.

You see the trucks, signs of movement far away in the background.

In this street, the sun cannot succeed in touching you.

Tant pis, you think…your shoes, your socks, your pants…they are all soaked by the rain that drenched you two hours ago now. 

If you see the sun, does it see you as well?

And how many more minutes of sun are there left this evening?

 

Perhaps, you should push yourself a little bit more…to write just to the very last second of each minute, really no matter what comes to your mind…as long as you continue to write.

You do not want to…you are tired. 

 

One hour.

 

You are not exhausted.

It is you, the next stop.  

But you are wrong.

You didn’t hear it right, or, perhaps, you heard rather that which you wish to hear…or you are always afraid of missing something.

The next stop, it’s you, you are sure this time.

 

The mountains have become cliffs that tell you goodbye.

Perhaps they are speaking to god, à Dieu.

You do not know how to respond to them.

You take a pause with the train.

In one minute, you tell yourself.

It will come very soon.

At this very minute in which you write right now.

 

You have lost time…fifteen minutes, and the nature of this attempt changes as well with the changing of the train.

And so your street has changed. 

 

There are many more people here.

And you are cold…the sun still cannot touch you.

Why are you cold in the middle of the summer?

There is something within which is also broken.

Now, you ask yourself why you had paid for these tickets…no one has come to check them and no one will come.

 

You miss the mountains.

But you do not have more than a week left without them…not to say that you will see them again after this ending, but rather that you will leave their absence.

 

You think that you write without sense.

You are without sense.

You have an hour left of this writing without sense.

You search for sense.

 

You realise now that you are completely surrounded by men.

The man to your right will arrive in five minutes…he tells his phone.

The man in front of you smiles without stopping at his phone.

The man to your left does not look at his phone, but he speaks to the man to his right…they are speaking of Paris. 

Paris, je pense à vous!

The city which always inspires all, or, at least, you and your life without sense.

You switch places with the man to your right who will arrive in fifteen minutes.

 

You are right by the window now.

There is everything and nothing to look at.

How did this idea arrive to your head?

Is it even warmer where you are headed?

The deafening train screams around you.

You are hungry for what, why, you do not know.

No one comes to check your ticket.

You no longer know either, what is it that has rendered you so tired.

You still have more to say, it is imperative that you always say. 

 

The people do not cease to speak.

Like you do not cease this writing, your exhaustion.

You want to close your eyes, but how will you write your words without looking?

It all depends on the look.

You do not see any more mountains.

You are still wet, the waters have seeped into your skin.

 

The train stops to empty itself of people, thankfully, you think…they speak too much.

There remains one man that speaks too loud on his phone…it is always men that speak particularly loud, particularly much.

Perhaps this isn’t your best idea.

It was, at least, an idea…you seek to create.

The time passes quickly when you succeed in making it so.

 

You do not know what you want.

Why do you seek to write this sense you have of yourself…one must look beyond that!

Perhaps, because it is your mind that moves and not you.

The train moves and not your legs.

You think more of the train’s exterior and of your interior, rather than the train’s interior and what is exterior to you.

But you are not interested in the interior of this train.

You are not interested in the interior of yourself either.

You have not even found the beauty in the street.

You have not described it.

But you know, without doubt, that you have seen it.

The impression which it has given you rests always with some part of you.

It is because of that, perhaps, that you look within without cease.

 

You remember the beauty.

It lives because you have seen it and because you think of it.

Your thoughts render it alive.

Witness to the street, to you, to this minute, to this writing, to this exhaustion which has not yet overcome you.

 

You do not have much time left.

When will it be, the grand finale?

The time passes, the train passes, your thoughts pass.

You see the moon, and you have lost the sun which has left you cold and in shadow.

And if your thoughts stop?

 

It is not possible, you think!

You write what you think because you see.

You cannot think without seeing, without looking, without movement. 

 

There is, in the train, a drunken man, who does not know anything but where he is going.

He asks every person whether it’s that, his stop?

Not yet.

His stop is yours.

One must wait, play the game with patience.

Not yet exhausted,

 

cannot stop.