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Mircea Cartarescu
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for thepressureofmy feeton
the grid. Extremely scared, I
tried to open the door. But
no door existed any more.
The walls around me were
no more. I stretched out my
hands into the emptiness,
into
nothingness
and
my fingertips, like insect
antennae, tried to grasp
reality. Or to generate
reality, like little electrical
sparks. They came back
inert, however, with no
news from death and
desertedness. I was alone,
suspended like a statue on
my grid, in the infinity of the
night. I stayed in that state
for hours and hours. My
palms were going over my
face and body to prove that
existence continues to exist.
I was crying unheard, I fully
felt, like in so many nights
of fright and cold sweat,
the terror of the ceasing of
being, of the disappearance
of the world. Eventually the
surfaces and the sounds and
the tastes and my internal
organs and the perception
of acceleration and the
ineffable flavours came
back, or my brain built them
again, like a tireless weaver
and his flying shuttle, so that
imperceptible
filaments,
cords and infra-real loops
were weaved in the non-
being first and used to knit
the web of space and time.
Vaguely, phosphorescently,
the walls were recreated
around me, as if light would
have started to flicker,
increasing by one photon
every instant, but increasing
as well by ricocheting on
surfaces, inventing them
slowly. I restartedtoperceive
the things around me and,