Neptune and me

The present is a chimera, foolish words that the mind tries to write every time it stops to breathe a little. Its scroll has been unfolding for billions and billions of years. What is the present but an impassive and languid sequence of absence, which expands or contracts according to our vague seasons and moods? We do not live in the present, we only jump from second to second on stones placed under our feet by a hypothetical fortune prestidigitator on this deep lake that is the universe, a world that has perhaps invented us, that has done and discovered so many. A ritornello, this universe, a violent pact with existence.

We are not the present, we do not know what it is, we keep our eyes closed, away from its obstinate gaze. We move forward, we dance, we sing, we dream while, far from us, giant planets bubble in their methane, while arthritic novae explode with anger.

What is the present when thin and quantum leaves, even diabolical, clash with each other to create dimensions so incomprehensible that they can only be magnificent and bizarre? What if my fingers typed other hypotheses, elsewhere, in a thought that none other than my multiple selves could understand?

I’m rambling, of course, isn’t my present unreal? That doesn’t mean I’m eternal. Neptune is taller than me, slower, more patient. He will eventually die too. But for the moment, as a great gift placed in the zodiac of my symbols, he manages my life, swallows me and my certainties.

Ah! I love to dream. How immense and heavy is my ignorance to bear!