Not thinking about anything. Only thinking of petty little things. Not thinking about the Whole. Thinking about everything and nothing. Thinking about petty little nothings. And, if I can, I think that God thinks me, thinking under God's protection. Is God there? Does He exist? I believe He does not exist, He is. Oh, He exists through Jesus. If, through Jesus-Through Jesus He has entered into existence. All these are nothing but words, no, if, maybe, maybe not– If He is and He exists, what will He do out of me? What will he do out of Rodica, Marie-France, all of us, who exist the way Jesus existed? I believe this. Jesus existed. If He existed, our Father also exists or is. He can hear me. You have to let go. You have to trust. Still, still- And I, too many vices, too many faults, too much vanity, too much pride, too selfish, too much of myself, and even now, I am writing this for me, I am thinking about myself mainly. Lord, facts, fact. I must let go of all my faults, errors, cowardice, stupid ideas. I have been living for a long time. I have lost a lot, a lot of time. If Jesus exists, there is God. Because Jesus exists, His Father is there. How shall I put it? Instead of going to Jesus, I want Jesus to come to me. As if I wanted to force God.* I think, yes I think the way I can. Or I hardly can. It is naïve, it is rudimentary to think the way I think. And the books I have read, metaphysics, philosophy – I did not understand anything. Well, I have a more elevated, more abstract mind. I did not assimilate anything. I am in primary school, I can mumble a catechism for kids, for naïve people, for beginners! So many studies! Just to arrive there, to stay there, again there. Still there, mom, dad. In what I write, in my novels, in my literary essays, in my plays, I seem to be very subtle, more subtle, it seems (to me). I am just a man doing literature. Faced with psychoanalysis, linguistics. However, in this very diary, in this very diary I believe I have said certain things worthy of being uttered: me, and I have read Maitre Eckart, and Rene Guénon. I have hardly read Pascal. Hardly. A logic treatise. But I think I understood better Saint John of the Cross, his negative theology (understood owing to Jean Barruzzi), but also a few Byzantine mystics, more accessible (to me), and also a lot of texts on the Gnostics that have greatly wronged me spiritually – I have suffered so much! On the contrary, I understood the philosophies of culture, of history all too well: Spengler, Keyserling. And writers who used to be difficult, and whose works I have been able to make comprehensible to others – Kafka, Proust, Dostoevsky, and Céline. And the old sociologists: Durkheim, and so on. And psychologists: William James. And then Spencer. Nietzsche is still in my stomach. I did not exactly manage to understand Kierkagaard. Schopenhauer is easier for me. And more comprehensible for me. I have read writings on Buddhism and Robin's books on Persian mystics. This has passed through my head. But there have been plenty of others. Many others. And poets? Mallarmé and Valéry are difficult. Rimbaud, Verlaine of course, and Baudelaire are more accessible. I loved Flaubert very much, of course, he taught me what literature was: literary value is not in "what is said," but in "how it is said." And the Romantics, so clear: Hugo, Vigny, Lamartine, Musset – They are the ones that have taught me simplicity. Earlier, when I was young, I used to read Plato, Plotinus. I have also read the Dadaists, the Surrealists, the Poes, the Balzacs, the Dumas. Interesting, interesting, funny, but they are not worth much if you want to sharpen your mind. I have hardly touched Spinoza. I am telling this story the way it comes to me. And the Racines, and the Corneilles, and the Molières, so pale in comparison with Shakespeare, Sophocles. And then what a difference between Joyce and Valéry Larbaud, who translated his work! Well, well, and so on, and so on, and Freud and Jung, let us stop here, let us stop here. Very bad: Marx, Lenin, and when I read them I felt as if I was walking on boiled paper. Better read Engels, Anti-Dühring. Oh, I see I never stop. What a library inside my skull! What a library! All this for nothing, almost for nothing. I am illiterate in fact. Not literate enough. Not an erudite, either. It is almost 1030 PM. I have prevailed over the night. I am calmer.(…) The enlightening experience I had when I was 18, was it a moment, a lightning of natural mystique, as defined by theologians? Or was it just a moment of euphoria, the way people often have in the springy plenitude of May, June, or when they are very young? I remember having run into Arşavir once in May. He was coming back from a park, dozens of years ago. The rich green of Bucharest (spring is brilliant in Bucharest, the way Paul Morand said in his book about that city), a bright sun, lighting up the trees, the leaves, gave him that morning the way it gave me – I was, however, at a different place – a biological, enormous joy and happiness. He shared it with me and I shared it with him. But this joy, which inflated our chests, did it participate in the natural music? In my case, it was clearer, considering the preceding experience, because I really had the feeling of a protective, reassuring Presence. I was no longer afraid of death – I said to myself – I was never going to be afraid again, I was not alone. Oh, how this incomprehensible joy appears to me as pale, and far away; now almost wiped out! The memory of a memory, of a memory, of a memory, so far away, so far away. Still, still, a real presence. Real. If it appeared to me it means that It wanted to, not as an illusion, but in a concrete manner, by manifesting itself. This concrete world that appeared to me now as real, now as unreal. I am clinging to my tests: scientifically proven truth, irrefutability of mystic testimonies, confirmed by the fact that they basically occur identically in all spiritual traditions. Also a confirmation of psychologists like Jung. But me, but us, we are far away, so far from these proofs that touch us, that touch me so little, to the point that they do not seem real. It is other people's Truth. This Truth – we must feel it ardently, living in us, for it to come close to us in other shapes, through reading, we have to feel it ourselves, for That to assist us, for It to be efficient. For It to change us. All this, all this is nothing but words. * I am at the center of the weird. I am at the heart of the Strange. At the same time, in full distress. The Strange is not distress. But they can coexist in our depths. In the depths of souls. The event can occur any time. This is September 1st. September and October have been the month of calamities in our families. I have lived in some kind of a foggy aura. Out of all that fog, which I put behind me, memories emerge to haunt me, to surround me. Was that me? Was I alive? Lit islands, slightly lit, surrounded by gray night. Deceptions in deceptions. The beings that should have surrounded me with love, friendship, whom I surrounded with love, friendship! But can people do anything for you, for other people? I know, I need a holy patience, an even greater love. To overcome a certain stupidity. Why, why are we like that? And how dumb selfishness is! I judge the selfishness of other people. I also judge mine. Come to think of it, there is nothing you can blame other people for. Nothing you can blame yourself for, either. Let us plunge into ignorance. A plunge into the awareness of being ignorant. Everything is so bizarre, bizarre and painful. Painful, frightening and painful. I can only perceive beings and things in their appearance: in their reality as phenomena. And I would like to know all reality, everything being done or happening, in the nominal reality. But what does that mean? This question is absurd, I know, and it is insolvable anyway. How a thing is "in itself." Only its Creator, Alone, knows this. I will ask Him! I must watch my meals, to get rid of these painful indigestions. Coming from this world, being in this world. Nothing coming from this world can bring me joy. Fog, dissipate, you are covering my past, my life, I wish to exist in clarity, as long as I am still here! I wish to see again faces, at least in their appearances, as apparitions. Yes, at least the way I have seen them. I want everything to be current, present. I want yesterday to be today. And that appearances reveal the essence. That everything be revealed for ever. La quette intermittente, 1987
by Eugen Ionescu (1909-1994)
