Feverish truths
I don’t walk around anymore. I’m sorry about that, still overwhelmed by small and large tasks. Nevertheless, spring continued its early advance over Montreal. We have not had, so to speak, a winter here. I just used the shovel to clear the stairs. Fortunately, we also did not experience endless rains even though the sky was, it seems to me, greyer than usual during this season.
Someone asked me yesterday how things were going. Well, it’s going well. Another invited me the other day to go for coffee, barely hiding his shyness and intentions. "How are the loves?" he said. I smiled. Love is fine, but unfortunately, you won’t know. I don’t talk about these things, because few people would understand them and it’s not really said.
Reading some remarks from my former editor on the annotated manuscript of the Les Mailles sanguines, rethinking what Mr. L. of Editions B. also wrote in his curiously vague but encouraging letter, then rereading what annoys or shocks in what I may have written in my text, I realize that the truth is not the best winged of literature, nor is it the friend of these public walks. We are vulgar people. Just yesterday, on this woman’s day, a friend made a mockery of another woman by suggesting that she should have her period. Friends can make these kinds of jokes, it doesn’t come out of the circle. Among lovers, we can stuff ourselves with passion, provided that, once the meal in bed is over, we wash and get dressed again.
This seems to be the case for both small and large realities. It always happens elsewhere and differently from what is told.
The truth is whispered as the sleeping volcanoes chirp. And the human head gets drunk with these invisible sufferings. Dressed like ancient Romans, wearing wigs, prisoner of our jacket-tie, our perfume-deodorant, we try to live nobly. But when guests are too drunk to hide the fat that chokes their viscera, our tables show off their naked and telluric clothes.
I smile when, on TV, we warn that the images that follow could shock the fragile souls. Fragile, really? Come on. We know too well what is going on in our veins to take offense at human stupidity. We regret the abuses, the injustices, but we also understand all the mechanisms, and we do not want them to happen in our courtroom. We foolishly act as if.
Literature, as always, like a placid Mercury, is enjoying this game. It will never lose its composure and who masters it will be able to take pride in having reached the top of illusions and lies. The mask is beautiful and king, as it is splendid in all its grammars, lexicons, and psychoriginals syntaxes.
