Photo: Dennis Friedler
Dedicated to the memory of Bob Raymond
Many thanks to Sarah Bliss for her contribution of my transcription text by Michel Serres, which passed through the mail slot at 55 Norfolk Street via postal delivery.
A young man tapped the glass after reading my prompt to request a mirror, which I'd wrapped around a stone under the window outside. I passed it to him through the mail slot, a small 2" x 3" pocket mirror. He held it at an angle to the text, moving line by line across the window as I wrote, the shadow of his hand visible through the paper as it moved along the surface of the glass, in the wake of my unfolding trancription. I thought about the transmission of Serres' words through my hand and fingers, ink flowing onto the paper, as my participant simultaneously deciphered an anguished first-person account of being caught in the porthole of a burning ship at sea in an icy storm - an existential journey of entrapment between two uninhabitable worlds.
Photo: Dennis Friedler
THE FIVE SENSES, a Philosophy of Mingled Bodies by Michel Serres
Translated by Margaret Sankey & Peter Cowley
Chapter 1-Veils
(BIRTH)
Fire is dangerous on a ship, it drives you out. It burns, stings, bites, crackles, stinks, dazzles, and quickly springs up everywhere, incandescent, to remain in control. A damaged hull is less perilous; damage vessels have been known to return to port, full of sea water up to their deadworks. Ships are made to love water, inside or out, but they abhor fire, especially when their holds are full of torpedos and shells. A good sailor has to be a reasonable fireman.
Fire training demands more of a sailor and is harsher and more uncompromising than anything he needs to learn as a seaman. I can still remember several tortuous exercises which teach not only a certain relationship to the senses, but also how to live or survive. We were made to climb down dark, vertical wells, descending endless ladders and inching along damp crawlways, to low underground rooms in which a sheet of oil would be burning. We had to stay there a long time, lying beneath the acrid smoke, our noses touching the ground, completely still so as not to disturb the thick cloud hanging over us. We had to leave slowly and deliberately when our name was called so as not to choke our neighbor with an ill-considered gesture that would brought the smoke eddies lower.
The breathable space lies in a thin layer at ground level and remains stable for quite a long period. Knowing how to hold your breath, to estimate the distance to the heart of the blaze or to the point beyond which one is in mortal danger; how to estimate the time remaining, to walk, to move in the right direction, blind, to try not to yield to the universal god of panic, to proceed cautiously towards the desperately desired opening; these are things I know about the body. This is no fable. No one sees dancing shadows on the walls of the cave where a fire is burning inside. Smoke stings your eyes, it fills the whole space, chokes you. Blinded, you have to lie down. You can only grope your way out. Touch is the last remaining means of guiding yourself.
Photo: Dennis Friedler
But this knowledge was academic until the day of genuine wrath arrived without warning, one winter’s day at sea. The fire was a rumbling, a terrifying sound like thunder. In a moment all the bulkheads were closed. I admired those who rushed without thinking into the manholes, down the ladders. I heard a lot of noise and remember nothing.
All of a sudden I am alone. What has happened? In the closed compartment the unbearable hear makes me feel like fainting. I have to get out. The door, behind, is immovably blocked, panels and levers locked water-tight, firmly fastened from the other side. I choke under the thick smoke, lying on the moving floor, shaken by the movement of the waves. Then all that remains is a porthole. get up without breathing, quickly try to unscrew the rusty flanges preventing its opening. They resist, they have not been used much, once or twice probably since the vessel was launched. They do not yield. I lie down again at ground level to get my breath. The weather conditions are worsening, as if the sea were becoming choppier. I get up again, holding my breath, trying to undo the screws that seems to be slowly yielding. Three or four times, I do not recall, I lie down again; as many ties, jaws clenched, muscles locked, I work on, with the porthole closes. Suddenly it opens.
Photo: Dennis Friedler
Light, and particularly air, rushes in, churning the smoke, which becomes even more choking. I quickly stick my head out through the open hole. Horrible weather, the brutal cold takes hold. I cannot open my eyes in the fury of the icy spray; my ears, hurt as they passed through, feel as though they are being ripped off; suddenly my body curls up, demanding to remain motionless in its warm retreat. I pull my head back inside, but choke and can now hear small explosions. The fire must have reached the munitions store; I have to get out as soon as possible. I push my head through, then one arm, not yet as far as my shoulder, only my hand and wrist. The angle of my elbow is a problem in the small space between my neck and the rim of brass around the porthole. I cannot get out, I have to get out. Everything is burning and my head is frozen.
I remain there, motionless, vibrating, pinioned, gesticulating within the confines of the fixed neckpiece; long enough for me to think, no, for my body to learn once and for all to say “I” in the truest sense of the word. In truth, with no possibility of being wrong. No mistake about it, since life quite simply depended on this dark, slow, blinding meditation.
I am inside, burnt to a crisp with only my frozen, shivering, blind head outside. I am inside, ejected and excluded, and my head, arm and left shoulder are outside in the howling storm. Inside, amidst the insane fire which pushes me outwards, my head and second shoulder, half of which is caught in an agonizing neckpiece, emerge, at the mercy of the storm. I am neither saved, nor even outside. I am still imprisoned, completely on one side of the window. The round hoop of brass open in the flank of the burning vessel is not as big as the compressed circle of my thorax. Still inside, even though both shoulders are out in the winter weather. The porthole compresses my chest to the limit - any further and it would be crushed. So I am going to die. I cannot get a foothold anywhere. Behind in the burning hell in which I am still trapped, my arms are of no use pressed against my body. I am a wisp of straw in a hole, unable to go forward, with no hope of going backwards, I will choke to death. Whether worse to breathe in the smoke, or the icy blast, or stay in the rusty collar, I can’t possibly decide.
Remaining transcription from this chapter continues at Seventh Week.
Photo: Dennis Friedler
Comments
Thanks for writing Margaret!
Thanks for writing Margaret!
what a moving performance
what a moving performance Catherine!
Wrapped Intention on March 8, 2012
The mirror attached to the stone is brilliant.
Waiting for next installment.....