A Something

There is something in the act of writing. A something one hopes to reach, yet it is already here, floating in front of me. A something in opposition to a nothingness. A writer’s longing. A sphere of whitish smoke in front of my eyes. It is not enough for me to contemplate it, I need to have it, to breathe it, to make it mine. To arrive.

Maybe that’s what I’m after when I write: to summon that something, to see it materialised, to be next to the sphere of smoke, the something. Like when Eisenheim* made Sophie appear, to be with her.

Maybe I write so that something will come out. Something that is inside me, or rather that I hope is inside me, because it would mean that I am alive. To write is to call, to conjure, to cast a spell with the hope not only that something will come out to see you, and let itself be seen, but also to confirm that it actually exists and thereby justifies your own existence. The something that gives you value.

Maybe that is why I write, to test, not without fear, whether I am alive.

And who am I when that something comes out? Am I a spectator? An admirer of my own reflection? In reality, what in that something is mine? Who am I to call it mine? Did it come out of me, really, or did it just come out? Did I write the spell that made it materialise or did I just sit and watch, looking and taking notes?

Maybe I am the ethereal one, the one on the periphery. And the something will wonder who is this one who feels so important when he is nothing but a speck of dust floating in the air on any given day. “Why does he think he is the one who has produced me, created me, called me,” the something will wonder, “why does he think he has more substance than I have, more reality than I have?” Yes, the something would look at me as a passing amanuensis, a tourist taking a photograph for the ridiculous purpose of eternalising an instant. The something that is would see me as the shell on its periphery.

I turn to leave, as the something I was looking for remains behind me, suspended in the air, permanent and ethereal. Who was I, then, a vehicle, a tunnel through which the somethings pass, a container? I go away grateful one more day for having seen something. For having seen reflected in that something a glimpse of my own existence or non-existence. It is night, but that strange moon is shining, the one that maybe passed through me.

*I feel like Chief Inspector Uhl in The Illusionist, just mesmerised by so many marvels, feeling incredulous to be here, and yet such a fervent believer. Uhl is the enthusiast and necessary spectator without which there is no show.