I’ve known about this gap for many years. At the age of twenty-one, she wrote: “The hole that anxiety had created in my chest expanded. It became larger than my room. I moved my belongings and lived in it.” Apparently I thought anxiety was the reason for my breakup. Anxious people start worrying at an early age, and I do not deny that I was – and still am – an anxious being, but there is no relationship between my anxiety and my gap. I know this now.
Rather, I am surprised now that I felt the gap at that time. It took me a long time to re-observe and diagnose what I noticed and diagnosed earlier.
My hole is deep and wide, centered on the chest. But she is not satisfied with her position. It spreads, expands, expands… Sometimes I feel it at the tips of my toes, so I do not stop cutting my toenails in order to limit its expansion, in order to cause pain so that it retracts a little… The gap that resided in me extends outside my body, reaching my purposes. It happens that I hold one of those objects that my gap reached before me, and it melts in my hands… exhausted, hollow and black.
I fill my gap with a lot of sweets and bread, buying dresses and shoes, dancing and beer… but it is an original gap, dug a long time ago, and I will not succeed in filling it without something that is its essence and its cause.
The gap swallows everything I throw into it, my gap is my black hole. Because of its depth, I hear the echo of everything I throw into it. Nothing satisfies her for more than a few minutes. Nothing fills it. At least nothing I have can fill my gap. Everything that comes from the outside is parasitic and rejected, I meet it with aversion and disgust and do not allow it to enter… I know very well that it will not fill my gap. It would be just another echo of another impact, and would only confirm the depth of the gap.
All the unwanted and unwelcome attempts of others are just reminders, and every reminder deepens my black hole. This hole swallowed all my organs. I watch him swallow my heart, just as I watched him swallow my soul. Sometimes this hole turns its back on me, and I regain the feeling of my hands and the touches hidden in them. I feel my face, I feel my other hand. Something is still there, not swallowed. He may have lost his memory, but he is there. If I had extended the period of touching a little, if I had been compassionate to my gap and been more occupied with me, perhaps my soul would have been able to remember more.
I put my hand over the gaping hole, inspect it, remind it of my presence, and sometimes stroke it.
The bigger my gap, the smaller I become. Less every day. My gap disgusts me.
Within two hours a day, I forget my gap or do not feel its existence. Two hours during which I watch a movie, most likely an old French movie.
I leave my gap or you leave me while I watch a movie from my sofa…
Godard, Truffout, Rohmer, Lelluoch, Malle, Sautet fill my gap every evening and for a limited time; Movie time. The intensity of all the beauty and love I see fills the black hole of my soul. The green ray left behind by the sun, la rayon vert, occupies the blackness of the hole in my heart and turns green. The distance that Jean Louis travels to surprise Anne after she declared her love in Un homme et une femme shames my gap and limits its expansion. When Michel told Patricia in the movie A boutde souffle to show him her toes and to take off her jacket after she insisted on asking William Wagner whether he would choose sadness or nothingness, Michel answered her while running his hand through her hair, not caring about Wagner and his choices, that he preferred nothingness to sadness. Because sadness is trivial, and it involves bargaining, and he prefers not to compromise and go with some things to the end… He tells her that he realizes this matter now as he looks at her neck, shoulders, and face, filling his gaze with his gaze, which has become the size of my body, my house, and the neighborhood in which my house is located.
These films make me think that possibilities are hidden somewhere, in one of the supermarket aisles, in others’ messages on Messenger, in traffic jams, in the stranger who has lost his way and is looking for someone to guide him to an address. These films make me think that I am not the only one waiting for possibilities, and that there are many others. Then, after the illusion movie ends, I realize that the time from which I stole my illusion no longer exists, and that this is precisely what caused my gap, and that is why I moved my belongings and lived in it, and for years.
