I opened my eyes with a calm not my own: I knew exactly what I had to do. I got out of bed and walked to the living room in the darkness, navigating around my few furnishings from memory. I stopped in front of the bookcase, opened my eyes, and lifted my face to the sky: I was in the center of a dark night where the stars had retreated and left the stage empty.
A night to be filled with only the warmth of my breath. I breathed in calmly, inhaling all the air I could, staring up into the nothingness, and when it was enough, the books began to come off the bookcase to the rhythmic movement of my hands, grabbing them one by one and throwing them out the window. They spun in the air, flapping open, suspended for a second, and with a grace that turned fall to flight, crashed into the street.
Each thud sounded like the bottom of a well, like the bottom of an empty sea. I dropped into the armchair.
The ideas would appear the way reliefs slowly emerge in the night, allowing their contours to be seen. One by one, they began to assume the precision of a line. The smell of things gleamed in my mind like the light painters capture. Suddenly, like an animal that perceives the presence of another animal in a forest, I looked at my desk and knew there was a book on it, the only one left.
I got up and walked over to it: it seemed to be waiting for me. I ran my fingertips across its cover, touching it the way one touches a child or a woman who has died. I sat down in the chair, opened it, and began to read.
