Even the source of this text lies in the fact that it is being translated,
knowingly, prior to being written, that it will make its way here and there
and assume facets which have been shaped in full not by me. But by this I
do not wish to point to it as though it were a ball threatening to turn in
every direction, but to the space openly unfolding to contain its movement.
Imagine, if you will, a desert (in Hebrew: midbar).
What arises in your mind's eye when you concentrate on the imaginary center
and characterize it by means of the recognizable details, with which you
are already familiar, if not the shadow region of that same name, that same
title, which principally exposes the blindness? But it is not vision that I
wish to point to but the space of language, which is already the lenses
that transmit the information and protect from it at one and the same time.
The sand screen and the texture of the body, which do not cover one the
other, and which are not camouflage, are what makes the being transparent.
Like a grain of sand, whose potential for being glass is already present at
the source.
*************
The view is what changes through movement, which has no marked path or
paved road or sign to affirm your location. This is your concession, and
the simple faith in your existence. The source of reading - or perhaps we'd
best call it learning - lies in the earth, in the meeting of barefoot, dry
soles with the dryness of the sand or the tips of roots awaiting rain.
Learning, then, is predicated on the danger of being swallowed up by the
earth and finally assimilated into the other. But who is this other about
whom you speak so much, in the space which has not, in any event, any
center or sanctuary?
Imagine, if you will, an oasis in the desert. But it is not the other that
I wish to point to, but the human covered with the same clothing; the whore
of the arid plains, for instance, who turns into a spring only upon her
sudden, transitory encounter with the man. Her learning, then, is
encapsulated in the empty space between encounters, between the units of
information that they bring with them.
Uri Tzaig
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