Agua Viva Read online

  Now I shall speak of the sadness of flowers so as to feel more of the order of whatever exists. Before I do, I’ll give you the nectar with pleasure, sweet juice that many flowers contain and that insects seek with greed. The pistil is the flower’s female organ that generally occupies the centre and contains the beginnings of the seed. Pollen is fertilizing powder produced in the stamens and contained in the anthers. The stamen is the flower’s masculine organ. It’s composed of the filament and the anther in the lower section surrounding the pistil. Fertilization is the union of the two elements of reproduction—masculine and feminine—from which comes the fertilized fruit. “And Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden which is in the East, and there he put the man whom He had formed” (Gen. II-8).

  I want to paint a rose.

  Rose is the feminine flower that gives herself wholly and such that the only thing left to her is the joy of having given herself. Her perfume is a crazy mystery. When inhaled deeply it touches the intimate depth of the heart and leaves the inside of the entire body perfumed. The way she opens herself into a woman is so beautiful. The petals have a good taste in the mouth —all you have to do is try. Yet rose is not it but she. The scarlet ones are of great sensuality. The white ones are the peace of the God. It’s very rare to find white ones at the florists’. The yellow ones are of a happy alarm. The pink ones are in general fleshier and have the perfect color. The orange ones are produced by grafting and are sexually attractive.

  Pay attention and as a favour: I’m inviting you to move to a new kingdom.

  Now the carnation has an aggressiveness that comes from a certain irritation. The ends of its petals are rough and impudent. The carnation’s perfume is somehow mortal. Red carnations bellow in violent beauty. The white ones recall the little coffin of a dead child—that’s when the scent becomes pungent and we turn our heads away in horror. How to transplant the carnation onto canvas?

  The sunflower is the great child of the sun. So much so that it knows how to turn its enormous corolla toward the one who made it. It doesn’t matter if it’s father or mother. I don’t know. I wonder if the sunflower is a feminine or masculine flower? I think masculine.

  The violet is introverted and its introspection is profound. They say it hides away out of modesty. Not true. It hides away in order to capture its own secret. Its almost-not-perfume is a smothered glory but demands that people seek it. It never shouts its perfume. Violet says frivolous things that cannot be said.

  The golden everlasting is always dead. Its dryness aspires to eternity. Its name in Greek means: sun of gold. The daisy is a happy little flower. It is simple and on the surface of the skin. It has but a single layer of petals. Its centre is a child’s game.

  The beautiful orchid is exquise and unpleasant. It isn’t spontaneous. It needs a glass dome. But it is a magnificent woman and that cannot be denied. Nor can it be denied that it is noble because it is epiphytic. Epiphytes are born on other plants without however taking nutrition from them. I was lying when I said it was unpleasant. I adore orchids. They’re born artificial, they’re born art.

  The tulip is only a tulip in Holland. A single tulip simply is not. They need an open field in order to be.

  Cornflowers only grow amidst the wheat. In their humility they have the audacity to appear in various shapes and colors. The cornflower is biblical. In the nativity scenes of Spain it isn’t separated from the stalks of wheat. It is a little beating heart.

  But angelica is dangerous. It has the perfume of the chapel. It brings ecstasy. It recalls the Host. Many wish to eat it and fill their mouths with the intense sacred scent.

  Jasmine is for lovers. It makes you want to put an ellipsis now. They walk holding hands, swinging their arms and giving each other gentle kisses to the fragrant almost-sound of jasmine.

  Bird-of-paradise is pure masculinity. It has an aggressiveness of love and of healthy pride. It seems to have a cock’s comb and his crow. It just doesn’t wait for dawn. The violence of your beauty.

  Night jessamine has a perfume of the full moon. It’s phantasmagoric and a bit frightening and is for people who like danger. It only emerges at night with its dizzying scent. Night jessamine is silent. And also belongs to the deserted street corner and in the dark and the gardens of houses whose lights are off and windows are shut. It’s highly dangerous: it’s a whistle in the dark, which no one can bear. But I can bear it because I love danger. As for the succulent flower of the cactus, it is large and scented and of a vivid color. It’s the succulent revenge that the desert plant makes. It is splendor being born of the despotic sterility.

  I can’t be bothered to speak of edelweiss. Because it’s found at an altitude of three thousand four hundred metres. It’s white and woolly. Rarely reachable: it’s aspiration.

  Geranium is the flower of window boxes. You find it in São Paulo, in the neighborhood of Grajaú and in Switzerland.

  Giant water lilies are in the Botanical Gardens in Rio de Janeiro. Enormous and up to two metres in diameter. Aquatic, they’re to die for. They are the Amazonian: the dinosaur of flowers. They give off great calm. Both majestic and simple. And despite living on the water’s surface they cast shade. What I’m writing you is in Latin: de natura florum. Later I’ll show you my study already transformed into a linear design.

  The chrysanthemum is of a deep happiness. It speaks through its color and its unruly shock of hair. It’s a flower that untidily controls its own wildness.

  I think I’m going to have to ask permission to die. But I can’t, it’s too late. I heard “The Firebird”—and drowned entirely.

  I must interrupt because—didn’t I say? didn’t I say that one day a thing would happen to me? Well it just happened. A man called João spoke to me on the phone. He grew up in the depths of the Amazon. And he says that there’s a legend there about a talking plant. It’s called the tajá. And they say that once indigenous people have charmed it in a ritual way, it may even say a word. João told me something that has no explanation: once he came home late and when he was walking down the hall where the plant was he heard the word “João.” So he thought it was his mother calling him and replied: I’m coming. He went upstairs but found his mother and father snoring and sound asleep.

  I’m tired. My tiredness comes often because I’m an extremely busy person: I look after the world. Every day I look from my terrace at a section of beach and sea and see the thick foam is whiter and that during the night the waters crept forward uneasy. I see this by the mark which the waves leave upon the sand. I look at the almond trees on the street where I live. Before going to sleep I look after the world and see if the night sky is starry and navy blue because on certain nights instead of being black the sky seems to be an intense navy blue, a color I’ve painted in stained glass. I like intensities. I look after the boy who is nine years old and dressed in rags and all skin and bones. He will get tuberculosis, if he doesn’t already have it. In the Botanical Gardens, then, I get worn out. With my glance I must look after thousands of plants and trees and especially the giant water lily. It’s there. And I look at her.

  Note that I don’t mention my emotional impressions: I lucidly speak about some of the thousands of things and people I look after. Nor is it a job because I don’t earn any money from it. I just get to know what the world is like.

  Is it a lot of work to look after the world? Yes. For example: it forces me to remember the inexpressive and therefore frightening face of the woman I saw on the street. With my eyes I look after the misery of the people who live on the hillsides.

  Y
ou will no doubt ask me why I look after the world. It’s because I was born charged with the task.

  As a child I looked after a line of ants: they walk single file carrying a tiny piece of leaf. That doesn’t keep each one from communicating something to the ones coming the other way. Ant and bee are not it. They are they.

  I read the book about the bees and ever since have looked after the queen bee most of all. Bees fly and deal with flowers. Is that banal? I saw it myself. Noting the obvious is part of the job. Inside each little ant fits a whole world that will escape me if I’m not careful. For example: an instinctive sense of organization, language beyond the supersonic, and feelings of sex fit in the ant. Now I can’t find a single ant to look at. I know there wasn’t a massacre because otherwise I’d have already heard.

  Looking after the world also demands a lot of patience: I have to wait for the day when an ant turns up.

  I just haven’t found anyone to report back to. Or have I? Since I’m reporting back to you right here. I’m going to report back to you right now on that spring that was so dry. The radio crackled as it picked up your static. Clothing bristled as it let go of the electricity of the body and the comb raised magnetized hair—that was a hard spring. It was exhausted by the winter and budded all electric. Wherever it was it headed afar. There had never been so many paths. We spoke little, you and I. I don’t know why the whole world was so annoyed and electronically able. But able to what? The body heavy with sleep. And our big eyes inexpressive as the wide-open eyes of a blind man. On the terrace the fish was in an aquarium and we drank juice in that hotel bar overlooking the landscape. With the wind came the dream of goats: at the next table a solitary faun. We looked at our glasses of ice-cold juice and dreamed statically inside the transparent glass. “What did you say?” you were asking. “I didn’t say anything.” Days and more days passed and everything in that danger and the geraniums so scarlet. An instant of tuning-in was all it took and once again we picked up the ragged static of spring in the wind: the goats’ impudent dream and the fish all empty and our sudden inclination to steal fruit. The faun now crowned in solitary leaps. “What?” “I didn’t say anything.” But I noticed a first rumble like that of a heart beating beneath the earth. I quietly put my ear to the ground and heard summer forcing its way in and my heart beneath the earth—“nothing! I said nothing!”—and I felt the patient brutality with which the closed earth was opening inside in birth, and I knew with what weight of sweetness the summer was ripening a hundred thousand oranges and I knew that the oranges were mine. Because that is what I wanted.

  I’m proud that I can always feel a change in the weather coming. There’s a thing in the air—the body alerts me that something new is coming and I bristle all over. I don’t know why. That very spring I was given the plant called primula. It’s so mysterious that in its mystery is contained the inexplicable part of nature. It doesn’t look at all unique. But on the precise day when spring starts its leaves die and in their place are born closed flowers that have an extremely dumbfounding feminine and masculine perfume.

  We’re sitting nearby and vaguely watching. And suddenly they start leisurely opening and surrendering to the new season in front of our aghast eyes: it’s spring that is moving in.

  But when winter comes I give and give and give. I bundle up quite a lot. I hug nests of people to my warm breast. And you hear the noise of someone having hot soup. I am now living rainy days: the time nears for me to give.

  Can’t you see that this is like a child being born? It hurts. Pain is exacerbated life. The process hurts. Coming-to-be is a slow and slow good pain. It’s the wide stretching as far one can go. And your blood thanks you. I breathe, I breathe. The air is it. Air with wind is already a he or she. If I had to force myself to write you I would be so sad. Sometimes I can’t stand the strength of inspiration. Then I paint with a heavy heart. It’s so good that things don’t depend on me.

  I’ve spoken a lot about death. But I’m going to speak to you about the breath of life. When a person is already no longer breathing you give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation: you place your mouth upon the other person’s and breathe. And the other starts to breathe again. This exchange of breaths is one of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever heard about life. In fact the beauty of this mouth-to-mouth is dazzling me.

  Oh, how uncertain everything is. And yet part of the Order. I don’t even know what I’ll write to you in the next sentence. We never say the final truth. May whoever knows the truth come forward. And speak. We shall listen contritely.

  . . . suddenly I saw him and he was such an extraordinarily handsome and virile man that I felt a joy of creation. Not that I wanted him for myself just as I don’t want for myself the boy I saw with the hair of an archangel running after a ball. I just wanted to look. The man looked at me for an instant and smiled calmly: he knew how beautiful he was and I know that he knew that I didn’t want him for myself. He smiled because he felt no threat at all. Because beings exceptional in any way are subject to more dangers than your average person. I crossed the street and took a taxi. The breeze made the hairs on my neck stand up. And I was so happy that I huddled in the corner of the taxi out of fear because happiness hurts. And all that caused by having seen the handsome man. I still didn’t want him for myself—what I like are people who are a little ugly and at the same time harmonious, but he somehow had given me a lot with his smile of camaraderie among people who understand each other. I didn’t understand any of this.

  The courage to live: I keep hidden what needs to be hidden and needs to irradiate in secret.

  I hush.

  Because I don’t know what my secret is. Tell me yours, teach me about the secret of each one of us. Not a slanderous secret. It’s just this: secret.

  And it has no formulas.

  I think I’ll now have to beg your pardon to die a little. Please—may I? I won’t be long. Thank you.

  . . . No. I didn’t manage to die. Am I ending this “word-thing” here by a voluntary act? Not yet.

  I am transfiguring reality—what is it that’s escaping me? why don’t I reach out my hand and take it? It’s because I only dreamed of the world but never saw it.

  What I’m writing to you is contralto. It’s negro-spiritual. It has a choir and lit candles. I’m now having a dizzy spell. I’m a bit afraid. Where will my freedom lead me? What is this that I’m writing to you? That leaves me all alone. But I go and pray and my freedom is ruled by the Order—I’m already without fear. All that’s guiding me is a sense of discovery. Beyond what’s beyond thought.

  Following myself along is really what I’m doing when writing to you and now: following myself without knowing where it will lead me. Sometimes it’s so hard to follow myself along. Because I’m following something that’s still nothing more than a nebula. Sometimes I end up giving up.

  Now I’m afraid. Because I’m going to tell you something. Wait until the fear passes.

  It passed. It’s this: dissonance is harmonious to me. Melody sometimes wears me out. And also the so-called “leitmotif.” I want in music and in what I write to you and in what I paint, I want geometric streaks that cross in the air and form a disharmony that I understand. Pure it. My being is completely absorbed and grows slightly intoxicated. What I’m telling you is very important. And I work while I sleep: because that is when I move inside the mystery.

  Today is Sunday morning. On this Sunday of sun and Jupiter I am alone in the house. I suddenly doubled over as if in the deep pain of childbirth—and saw that the girl in me was dying. I shal
l never forget that bloody Sunday. It will take time for the wound to heal. And here I am tough and silent and heroic. Without a girl inside me. All lives are heroic lives.

  Creation escapes me. And I don’t even want to know so much. That my heart beats in my breast is enough. The impossible living of the it is enough.

  Right this minute I feel my heart beating out of control inside my breast. It’s reasserting itself because in the past few sentences I was just thinking on my surface. So the basis of existence turns up to wash over and erase the traces of the thought. The sea erases the traces of the waves on the sand. Oh God, how happy I’m feeling. What ruins happiness is fear.

  I get scared. But my heart’s beating. The inexplicable love makes the heart beat faster. The sole guarantee is that I was born. You are a form of being I, and I a form of being you: those are the limits of my possibility.

  I’m in a pleasure to die for. Sweet prostration as I speak to you. But there’s the waiting. Waiting is feeling voracious about the future. One day you said you loved me. I pretend to believe it and live, from day to day, in joyful love. But remembering with longing is like saying farewell once again.

  A fantastical world surrounds me and is me. I hear the mad song of a little bird and crush butterflies between my fingers. I’m a fruit eaten away by a worm. And I await the orgasmic apocalypse. A dissonant throng of insects surrounds me, light of an oil lamp that I am. I then go too far in order to be. I’m in a trance. I penetrate the surrounding air. What a fever: I can’t stop living. In this dense jungle of words that thickly wrap around whatever I feel and think and live and transform everything I am into something of mine that nonetheless remains entirely outside me. I’m watching myself think. What I wonder is: who is it in me who is even outside of thinking? I’m writing you all this because it’s a challenge which I have to accept with humility. I’m haunted by my ghosts, by whatever is mythic and fantastical—life is supernatural. And I walk on a tightrope up to the edge of my dream. Guts tortured by voluptuousness guide me, fury of impulses. Before I organise myself, I must disorganize myself internally. To experience that first and fleeting primary state of freedom. Of the freedom to err, fall and get up again.