Le feu follet
René Magritte - Empire of Light (L'empire des lumières)
The night was of absolute tenebrosity. The girl couldn’t see anything at all, but she could smell the stench of the swamp all around. She caught a glimpse of a ghost light; something like a lantern hovering above the murky body of water. She started walking towards it, carelessly, as if floating in the air. Neither the thick bushes, nor the insects, nor the hiding animals, nor the mud—nothing was going to stop her from reaching that light. Oh, that foolish light! Nobody had warned the girl that it was a ghost that misleads travelers… un feu follet!
I walked from Midtown Manhattan to Chelsea, from Chelsea to West Village, from West Village to Soho, from Soho to Chinatown, and from Chinatown to Bowery. It might seem to some like a colossal walk, but it was barely enough to anchor me in reality. I don’t walk to reach places. I walk to remember that I am a living creature that has two arms, two legs, a nose, a mouth, and two eyes. Nothing supersedes the physical presence in reminding us of our humanity. The exhaustion, the heavy breathing, and the sweaty back are reminders that we are nothing more than humans… that we are nothing less than humans.
My mom kept calling. She always calls me at the wrong time. She seems to know when I am in my blue hour. She asks me if I am alright. I answer “I am alright” like always, and like always she does not believe me. I am alright. What is there to feel bad about? Everything seems so far on the horizon. There is nothing imminent that weighs me down yet here I am, like always, lying to my mother that I am alright. Growing up dizzies me. The years I’ve gained befall me like the rock on Bilal’s chest. I don’t know if I can handle the passing of time. I don’t know if I’m fit for this thing they call living. The loud sirens drown out my trembling voice: “I’m scared of disappearing,” I yell into the phone.
“What do you mean?” she asks worriedly.
“Can I call you later? I’m trying to figure out where I’m heading.”
One night, while my mom and I were driving around our old neighborhood, she looked at me caringly and said, “I have always wondered what made my kids special. Some kids are impeccable athletes, others are prodigy musicians. So I wondered: what about my child? And it dawned on me. You can write. That is what makes you special—you can really write.” Her epiphany was met with silence on my behalf.
That’s the only thing standing between me and death. I can write. That’s the sole reason I matter. My mother’s special child can write. What a wonderful curse, what a perfect tragedy. My silence always burdens her. She asks me if I am alright and I say nothing.
“You scare me. You always hold everything within you. You bottle up your feelings. That’s not good. It will turn into poison inside of you if you don’t let go.”
I write out of spite. All my words are visceral screams in the face of annihilation. I write out of fear that I can’t write. I hide it under my skin like sin. Forgive me, Mom, for I think I am not that good of a writer. I wake up every day and gaze at my reflection in the mirror carefully. I see nothing but a foe. I am scared that when they examine my pen post-mortem, they will establish that I, indeed, was not all that I was made out to be.
I am jealous of all those who can really write: the great poets, writers, and even some friends. I envy them. I write to deserve to live. All this vast earth, and this is the only space that was granted to me. I squeeze into the layers of existence just like I squeeze my foolish poems into conversations.
New York, this pharaonic city with its modern obelisks raging to reach the sky and give a middle finger to the heavens. The human ego, what a shitshow. I keep walking, but what is there left for me to do? I wander into little streets and big avenues, looking for a sign or a reason to keep believing. I want to believe that I can write, that I have it in me to erect magnificent worlds like God. I want to keep holding on to the delusion that my solitude is not that of a broken soul, but that of great writers who can’t be rehabilitated into ordinary citizens. I am scared that my solitude is not a fragile literary gift, but a stain from a painful past that won’t go away no matter how many showers I take.
The night’s tenebrosity is interrupted by an arsenal of street lights, car lights, and advertisement signs. There is nothing mystical about light in big cities. I wonder if I am not a victim of great hopes and a mediocre essence. What if I am inducing myself into a grave error by believing that I exist outside the margin of the norm? What if none of my thoughts are original? What if all the pain I lived, and still carry, is not part of the story but is the story? Full stop. What if the hero’s journey was a flat line on an electrocardiogram?
I feel blue. A transparent and hazy blue. My lungs are tight, and oxygen is not reaching my brain properly. The death of the artist. Mortem obire or a suicide? How can I sustain the illusion that I have a colorful world waiting to be brought to life when its colors keep melting at my feet? For how much longer can I keep chasing that foolish light before my knees give in? The sweet blasphemy of writing; the tender pagan desire to create an altar of words where the ebbs and flows of life are just an inspiration for beauty. What can I do if I don't have it in me to be great? What can I do if my mother’s sweet child has no place of their own under this sky?
“I am alright, I need to write regardless, about I don’t know what, maybe un feu follet, a lantern of some sort, or ghosts only I believe in.”
“Take care, my precious child, my special precious child.”