Empty Words

by MARIO LEVRERO

  A particularly appropriate activity at this stage, then, would be to deliberately write words with r’s in them. Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran (was there a second line? I don’t remember). Round and round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran. But I’ll get bored if I keep repeating the same thing, so I need to think of other words with r’s in them beyond that silly tongue twister. For example, rhododendron, rower, sombrero, bra-strap, parricide, reverberate, procrastinate, corduroys (I repeat: corduroys). (I don’t know why this word comes out so badly: corduroys, corduroys, that’s better, corduroys, corduroys.) Raspberry, crosscurrents, crosscurrents, extracurricular, extracurricular, extracurricular, extracurricular. Transferrable. Transferrable, transferrable, transfer, transfer, transfer, transfer, transfer. It’s still not right.

  August 29

  Relaxing the hand and forming each letter with love; that’s today’s motto. I’ve noticed that my hand and arm are often tense when I write. If I did any more than the page I currently fill with these exercises, I could easily end up with so-called writer’s cramp. Trying to relax the muscles might lead to a decline in the quality of the output, but I think it’s a stage I have to go through, because my previous achievements, though considerable, came from focusing on the wrong part of the problem. So my writing might look careless and untidy at the moment, but this is actually due to a deliberate attempt on my part to change the way I work, which is no easy task because it involves keeping my attention strictly divided between the tension in my muscles (now they relax, now I get distracted and they tense up, and so on) and the act in itself of forming the letters. It’s difficult, very difficult indeed, but I think it’s the right approach. Keeping an eye on the tension in my muscles is also useful training for my plan to make relaxation a daily habit, which is something I’m always putting off but can put off no longer because it’s a crucial part of good health—or of my good health, at least. According to my theory, relaxation leads to the production of endorphins, which will allow me to smoke less, for one thing, and might eventually help me stop smoking altogether (something else I’ve been putting off for too long).

  August 30

  And so I continue with my new approach, keeping the muscles in my arm and hand relaxed. Let’s see if I can manage some passable handwriting under these conditions. It looks like I can. The secret is relaxing the muscles selectively, so only the ones that are absolutely essential to holding the ballpoint are active, while all the others (in my hand and arm but also in the rest of my body) remain as loose as possible. It’s difficult, I know. But it can be done. I need to stop for a second, though, because Pongo the dog is barking outside and waiting for me to open the door (another new development since the move is my role as doorman, since there’s no gap in the wire fence here to let him in and out as he pleases).

  *

  I’m back. Relaxing isn’t easy at the best of times, and it’s even harder when you’ve just kicked the dog. These days he likes to wait until you open the door for him, and then, instead of coming in, run off and bark furiously at the passersby, as if he needed your protective presence to do so. You end up standing by the open door like a fool, waiting until His Lordship decides he’s barked enough and deigns to come back. He knows this behavior gets him a kicking, so he scurries inside very quickly and nervously, trying to move faster than the oncoming foot. Sometimes he manages it, but not today.

  Recounting this distracted me from my muscles and careful forming of the letters. I can’t let myself get overexcited by telling stories; I need to focus on the real reason for doing these exercises. At least today I managed to relax enough to begin distinguishing between the muscles I should be relaxing and those I shouldn’t.

  September 5

  I have a good excuse for neglecting these exercises (in their appealing, encouraging, relaxing new incarnation) over the past several days, since I urgently needed to put together a collection of short stories—but now I’m getting distracted from forming the letters properly.

  Preparing this collection of stories, I was going to say, was a demanding and even rather torturous process involving selecting the texts, some of which had been lost years ago in envelopes containing other things; making decisions (this one yes, this one no; I prefer this version to that, and so on); tracking down the details of previous publications (if there were any); and photocopying the final version of some texts, etc.; and all within a very tight time frame, something like three days. But now I’m getting distracted from forming the letters again.

  I need to pay close attention to my handwriting—and indeed to my hand, bearing in mind which muscles I have to keep tense and which I have to relax. Since it’s impossible to concentrate on everything at once, I need to achieve a kind of oscillating attention, which swings between one thing and the other, until one day, I imagine, my movements (i.e., the regular handwriting and the selective relaxation) will become automatic. In the meantime, I need to practice and practice, and even if I don’t think I’ll manage more than my usual daily page, it at least needs to be every day, without missing any the way I normally do when faced with external obligations that often seem urgent and essential, though of course they hardly ever are. That’s enough for today, but I’ll be back.

  September 6

  I should be having lunch right now, but I think practicing my relaxation and meticulous handwriting is more important for my psychosomatic health. So, since later on I’ll get caught up, as always, in a chain of events that have nothing to do with me, and I won’t find the moments of calm that are indispensable/indispensable (I repeat the word because I’ve noticed I tend to rush long words and don’t pay attention to forming each letter); indispensable, I was saying (and I’ll say it again: indispensable), for the intense mental concentration that exercises like these require, I decided to prioritize this activity and put off—at no small personal sacrifice—my lunch. T T That was a very long and complicated sentence. It’s nice to see that today I’m keeping the muscles in my hand and arm that aren’t used for writing relatively relaxed, and that, at the same time, my handwriting’s quite even ( compared with previous days, when I’d only just adopted this approach). Now I have to extend the relaxation, little by little, to the rest of my body, which will be no small feat.

  September 7

  Concentration. Relaxation. Focus on forming the letters and focus on your muscles. The only ones you should be using are the ones involved in holding the ballpoint and moving it as you write; that is, the muscles in the thumb, index finger, and middle finger of the right hand, and the muscles in the wrist (which seem to affect the little finger) and the forearm, which needs to glide slowly over the surface of the desk. The biceps also do some work (I can feel it), but I don’t know if they’re supposed to or if it’s just a needless contraction. The rest of the muscles in my body should be relaxed, but they’re not. This is called tension, and it’s what I have to work on correcting, while my hand’s unhurried activity becomes automatic. For too long now I’ve been unable to loosen up, at least as completely as I used to be able to.

  I’m carrying on after an interruption (an in no way uncommon occurrence in this house) (and one of the reasons why I can’t loosen up properly). Now another interruption. This house is hardly a monastery of monks bound by a vow of silence.

  The situation, however, is less serious than at other points in my life, for example the period I went through about ten years ago, even if it’s more serious in terms of the internal factors that keep me from relaxing. And I’m putting my faith in these exercises, at least as a starting point. Today I managed to pay attention to both arms as I was writing, though I didn’t form the letters so well as a result.

  September 8

  And even though it’s Sunday, here I am, present and ready to maintain the continuity of these relaxed (in the good sense of the word) exercises. I’m monitoring the muscular tension in my fingers; I want to feel that only the muscles which should be working are doing so. When i
t comes to my writing arm, I still have problems with the unintentional contraction of the bicep (or biceps?), which for some reason seems to be linked to the middle finger (maybe it is; I should ask Alicia if she remembers the relevant insertions).

  But now look: because I’ve been paying attention to my muscles, I’ve neglected my handwriting. I was also distracted by the memory of a surprising discovery I made yesterday afternoon during my siesta: namely, that I find the sensation of being relaxed, especially when accompanied by a marked tranquility of mind, profoundly unpleasant.

  This discovery left me concerned and bewildered, since I’m deliberately pursuing relaxation and peace of mind and wondering why I can’t achieve them. The obvious, practical answer that struck me yesterday is this: I’m not achieving them because I don’t want to achieve them.

  Then I reached the conclusion that my experiences over the past few years (Buenos Aires, family life) have changed the addiction I used to have to endorphins (which I’d developed with hard work and support) into an addiction to adrenaline, and my inclination toward alpha waves has shifted toward beta waves. This is all very worrying, but I shouldn’t lose hope, and, as Alicia always says, I need to find the halfway point, the balance. I must try to create a space for—a shift, however slight, toward—endorphins (especially since with time they can replace the need for nicotine). To be continued.

  September 19

  I know it’s been days and days since I last did these exercises—I abandoned them when I was feeling particularly crazy and anxious. Today I’m still feeling crazy and anxious, but I’m also determined to start sorting things out. Going back to these exercises is always the first step toward psychophysical health, I think, though obviously they’re not enough by themselves, and there are plenty of other areas of my life that need addressing as well. And that’s what I’m going to try to do, plugging my ears with wax so I don’t hear the song of the sirens who want to lure me from the true path (in fact, my ears are plugged with wax anyway at the moment, as usually happens to me every other winter).

  I should add that I’m amazed at the quality of the handwriting on this page—I would have expected it to be much smaller and more uneven. It’s actually fairly easy to read, which I find astonishing. I should also say that I’m not bothering to relax the muscles that don’t need to be tense while I’m writing, though I haven’t forgotten about that. Every day I pray to God for the strength and reason I’ll need in my determined pursuit of discipline in all these areas of my life. Ciao.

  September 20

  I hope I’m not interrupted during these exercises, though I can’t say I feel very optimistic. All right, I’ll begin by getting more settled in my chair, resting my feet comfortably on the floor and my left arm on the desk, trying to relax from the shoulder down. Next I focus my attention on my right hand, trying to sense the muscles that need to be active and relax the others, in the wrist, and now in the rest of the arm, and also from the shoulder. Now let’s think about the handwriting: I need to slow down the rhythm, which is currently too fast, and find the patience to form each letter as correctly as possible. I have trouble writing any more slowly than this, but

  *

  The asterisk indicates that I was indeed interrupted (a few hours ago), and now at almost one in the morning) I doubt I’ll be able to continue these exercises as determinedly as I began them. I’ll try to go on with the calligraphical part, at least, without worrying about relaxing my muscles; now I’m slowing downtrying to slow downthe rhythm of my writing and concentrating on each of the letters. I’m also trying to forget, as much as I can, about the coherence of what I’m saying. I’m thinking about each letter in turn—but everything I just wrote is in fact completely untrue; I’m still going too fast, far too fast, maybe because I can see I’m coming to the end of the page, which normally makes people hurry, as if hurrying could somehow increase the number of words that fit on a piece of paper. But tomorrow is another day.

  September 22

  When I wrote the date at the top of today’s exercises (it’s 3:08 p.m. and fewer than twelve hours have passed since yesterday’s)—when I wrote the date, as I was saying, I realized a lot of things about my behavior last night and my current uneasy state. Today is my mother’s birthday. She passed away five weeks ago. It’s Sunday now, and last Saturday I was with Alicia at the cemetery, marking the first month since her death. I don’t normally go in for these things, but this is an exceptional case, firstly because one’s mother is always someone particularly important, but also because this death brings with it real reasons—not just unconscious, fantastical ones—for me to feel guilty, and this guilt is very difficult to overcome. I even resorted to confessing to a priest, which was highly uncharacteristic of me. It’s certainly true, as the priest helped me see, that my feelings of guilt are exaggerated and based on unverifiable hypotheses about how different things might have been if I’d done x, y, or z. It’s also true that I was “made” to be very susceptible to guilt and that the person who made me this way was none other than my mother. But be that as it may, I’m still feeling uneasy, though I’ve tried to escape that feeling by watching an excessive number of films and to escape myself using other techniques, evasion tactics I adopted during my mother’s months of intense suffering and continued to make use of after her death. Now I think it’s time to turn back toward myself, to walk the other way down the path of avoidance, and to trust in the fact that even if I am at fault, I’ve been forgiven by my mother and by God. As everyone knows, guilt gets you nowhere and repentance really consists of “not sinning again”—of not returning over and over to a previous action you can’t undo, and instead returning to normal life and generating good things for yourself and everyone around you, which is better than greeting the world with the ghastly countenance of an invalid. And so, on the seventy-eighth anniversary of her birth, the tribute I owe to my mother is this: my health.

  Epilogue: The Empty Discourse

  September 22, 1991

  When you reach a certain age, you’re no longer the protagonist of your own actions: all you have left are the consequences of things you’ve already done. The seeds you’ve sown have been growing away, out of sight, and now suddenly they burst up in a kind of jungle that surrounds you on all sides, and you spend your days trying to hack out a path with a machete just so you can breathe. It soon becomes clear that any hope of getting out is completely false, because the jungle’s spreading faster than we can cut it back and, more importantly, because the very idea of “getting out” makes no sense: we can’t get out because at the same time we don’t want to get out, and we don’t want to get out because there’s nowhere else to go, because the jungle is us and getting out would mean a kind of death, or even death itself. And maybe once we were able to die a certain sort of seemingly harmless death, but now we know such deaths were the seeds we sowed of the jungle we’ve become.

  But today, around sunset, I saw a few reddish rays of sun reflected in some glazed ceramic bricks and realized I’m still alive, in the true sense of the word, and even able to place myself within myself: it’s all a question of finding the right balance, by means of a kind of spiritual acrobatics. I can’t get free of the tangle of consequences, and there’s no point trying to be the protagonist of my own actions again, but what I can do is find my lost self among these new patterns and learn to live again, only differently. There’s a way of going with the flow that means you end up in the right place at the right time, and this “going with the flow” is what allows you to be the protagonist of your own actions——when you’ve reached a certain age.

  *

  A few days ago, I dreamed about a group of priests in different-colored robes. I remember one of them in particular, whose robes were a very bright purple. They adopted various positions, which in turn combined to form further positions, and I realized they were expressing the secret of Alchemy.

  COLONIA, NOVEMBER 1991

  COLONIA, MAY 1993

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