caesura Tracy Breathnach
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‘As I found my feet through the labyrinth, what happened next was simply remarkable. I have been searching for the words to articulate the experience but the thing that keeps reverberating is this idea that, I saw space. I do not mean I saw space, as in the space outside the o-zone or the space captured between walls, but perhaps a more internal ‘space’. Which is something that I have never ever seen before. As though this moment became a void, miles between the two lines of purple sand carving me to the end point which I could see. The proximity of the beginning point and the end point I think is what refuged this moment. Denied the right of the final experience before I complete this walk, although, it is so close that if perhaps I took a run up I could jump straight into the centre. The labyrinth the caesura, the pause between the two points.’i
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If I left If I felt myself leaving Where did I go? What part of me left? Was I ever found?
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Morning. I enter. The first footsteps on the soft, smooth sand. The grains crumble and give way under my feet. I follow the paths as they wind their way in and out and in again. Nearer the centre the sand is firmer- more tightly packed. It holds my foot more firmly. I sit down in the centre, parting my legs around the singing bowl. Closing my eyes, my breathing softens and I drop down // I am wondering about the blue lights, maybe we can turn them off while each audience member is in the centre? This should help avoid the likelihood of them burning through. I must remember to tell Nakita when she gets in // down, down // Someone’s arrived. Nakita. It must be nearly time // dropping further and deeper into myself // Afterwards I realise that this would be the deepest I would travel all day // At this point I touch a dark empty space inside. There is no sound there. My body is completely still and I am able to notice what’s happening on the surface without leaving the depths. My breath is barely noticeable. As though I am hidden inside a dark cloak. No words here // Nakita is in the space. She pops her head in. I tell her about my idea for the lights. She agrees. We will start in 5 minutes. It is as though my voice is coming from outside me. As though I am separate from myself.
A warm welcoming hushed-ness, enveloping me. I feel like I’m going to an appointment with an authority that I do not entirely know. The low sound of the recording invariably draws my attention and, though I have seen parts of this before, I am mesmerised. When it is time to go, the feeling of meeting someone extraordinary mounts, the separate foyer where I place my shoes and then the ante-chamber with its pool of light conjure up my understanding of a witchdoctor, a healer, a wise-woman. I enter.ii
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I hear the door open each time, hear the footsteps as each person approaches the curtain through which they enter the inner space. Some pause before they walk in. Maybe looking at the labyrinth. Me. Maybe thinking about why they’re here. Maybe stating their internal intention. Maybe remembering that they forgot to turn their car lights off. I thought there would be complete silence. No words. No sound. Apart from the bowl singing. But each person makes a noise. Walking on the sand. With my eyes blindfolded they are somehow louder. I can hear the unique rhythm of each one. Bodies punctuating sand. Typography come alive. I sit in complete stillness, waiting for them. I place my attention on my breath. Although there is a curiosity racing around under my skin. It strains towards each person as they come closer and relaxes again when they have moved to the outer paths. My skin follows them as they walk past my back. The way a dog would. Sniffing them perhaps. When they come closer I can smell each person. Perfume. Aftershave. Bodycream. Cooking Oil.
The labyrinth glows. I am surprised by its horizontal nature, I did not expect to see you yet, I somehow imagined you as late revelation in the belly of an imposing black warren. The white sand seems to pulse, the light seems to come from it. For a moment I consider taking off my socks, too, they are wet from the torrential rain I braced to get here. It feels wrong to do so, however, so I step inside. The traces of those gone before me imprinted on the path I still feel like I am the first one to walk here. Perhaps I am. The unique constellation of my being here, now, drenched socks, tea-warmed core and you, waiting, silent, still, red and white has never happened before and will never happen hereafter. I am timid, but curious.
I entered the space both with trepidation and sensitivity: with respect. I am disorientated. I am fearful of going the wrong way – I cannot cross the indentations of lines in the sand. Beneath my feet the granules part my toes, their friction creating a sensation that immediately tips me out of the ordinary. The image that registers in front of me is one of a woman blindfolded. I clutch hold of the red thread unable to recall what I am to do with it. The woman is situated in the centre of the space, commanding my focus and attention. I begin my journey by circling her – moving towards her and then moving further away from her before I find myself in the centre of the labyrinth sitting on a red cushion facing the woman. The labyrinth dictates the journey that I am to take. I’m aware of when I turn my back to the woman. The quiet solidarity of her presence demands my focus and respect. I feel that I am betraying her when I turn away from her.iii
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They arrive at the centre, some pausing before stepping in. One asks for permission to enter. They sit down. Settle in. Sometimes we begin by pausing together. Breathing together. Being together. Others want action straight away. I know because they are holding their breath. I know because they are straining. My right hand comes to the bowl and I find the beater. I move it anti-clockwise around the rim of the bowl. Each circle I make sounds different. Sometimes it starts with a low drone, slowly building and deepening. For others, the bowl goes into full song straight away. The lights are changing. The blue has faded. The white is becoming red until the bowl glows red filled with the light. tracing the circle sings the bowl suspends us weaving listening together
When I reach the centre and settle down, the lights change, gradually, the path no longer illuminated. You and me in a puddle of light in what feels like empty space. You are Persephone, the oracle of Delphi, Cassandra. I feel I will come out a different person than went in. Slowly you reach in to the alabaster bowl and run the stick along its outside. It begins to sing. I feel the sound soar and build, reach inside me. The light melts with it. For a moment I wish it was possible to send light through the bowl upwards but that technical thought is soon lost among the note that seems to call out. To whom or what I cannot tell, perhaps to something within me. I am simultaneously happy and sad. There is something in the quality of the sound as it builds and rings around us that resonates deeply inside of me. In German we call it Sehnsucht. English has no word for it, “yearning� is possibly the closest thing, but Welsh, I have learnt, has an equivalent: hiraeth.
The music bowl creates a resonating sound that lingers throughout the space long after the action is complete. The lighting state alters and I become aware of another person in the space. Breaking the intimacy of these actions I am reminded and propelled into remembering that this is a theatre event.
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Once the sound fades. And we are both ready. I hold out my hand. It is both an offering and a request. Here I am. For you. Open to you. Thank you for coming. I need you. Sometimes you hold my hand. You offer me what you’ve carried from the outside. Love. A red thread. Sometimes crumpled into a tight ball. Sometimes stretched out. Sometimes reluctantly. It is hard to let go. We think it will never come back if we let it go. I receive your gift with gratitude. It weighs nothing in my palm. I find its centre and bring it to my body. Holding it there, I sew it on to the white dress with a needle. Red threads hanging down. The open wound cascades Down this soft white dress Bleeding itself towards you Magnetism of blood seeking life I follow the river and it brings me back To you I am returning
The sound hovers in the air for a long time after you have stopped your swirling, stroking moves around the bowl. This is the moment of trade. A wisdom, it feels, has been imparted to me, now it is my turn to offer up something. I hand over the white thread that I have folded in half and held on cautiously throughout. I almost miss its woollen warmth when it leaves my fingers. I am hesitant to touch you. There is a sanctity in your separateness that I feel should remain undisturbed. Nonetheless, I long to fold my hand around yours. The sense of inappropriateness overrules my desire to give you human contact. You straighten, your breath intensifies. You lean back, shaking. I see the goose bumps rise along your arms and legs. Carefully, you sew the thread in line with the others. It is a gash, a wound, a bleeding cut along your stomach. And yet the action of putting it there yourself is a choice, a deliberate encounter with pain and, by choosing it, becomes a process of healing. When you return to stillness, I am reluctant to leave.
I hand over the piece of wool to become sown onto the woman’s garments. At once I am reminded of the vulnerability of our stomachs and the intrusive nature of this part that bears no orifice except those that are man-made.
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From my open mouth the seed in my palm stretched outwards falls to the floor. The left hand reaches to lift my blindfold but it is intercepted by my right hand, which pushes it back down and holds it in my lap. It is not yet time. With each thread, and each seed, the time comes closer. How will I know when it has arrived? For now I must stay here. And hope another person will come and offer their presence. In the end Recovery is only real If I believe it.
Those hidden places where you hadn’t dared to go before, Those sandy paths, scattered footprints, But not yours, until now.
If I left If I felt myself leaving Where did I go? What part of me left? Was I ever found?
I do not wish for you to be alone and I cannot yet face the outside world again. After a few moments of shared breath, I stand, and bow in thanks. I approach the exit, turn and bow once more. I feel deep humility and gratefulness. I leave the labyrinth, am led to the foyer. I replace my shoes. Somewhere just above my solar plexus I carry a knot, it feels the size of a fist. It is heavy and both familiar and strange. It is the physical reminder of grief, I know it well, but now it seems calmer than usual, less infectious. I feel like I have been faced with my most basic fears, my pain, past and present and been told that it is okay. It is okay to grieve. It is okay to be afraid. It is natural to fear. I will heal. I leave, the rain has abated. I wish for an armchair in a dark, warm room, perhaps with candles, with low yellow light in any case, to curl up in, sip another cup of tea and address that ineffable change that has taken place in me. The people in the streets are hectic, another timeline seems to sweep them along. I walk home like a somnambulist. All actions are complete. I hesitate, absorbing and fighting resonances that I am reflecting on from my own experience. I make the decision to get up and leave. Turning my back on the woman I surrender her to the vastness of her environment. There is a sense of continuation and of our encounter being brief in those precious minutes that we spent together‌ I felt bereft; I felt that I was grieving for something that I had no comprehension for.
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Hélène Cixous is waiting for her birthday to arrive. She will be 60. She is waiting for the hour it will come to pass. ‘The hour is foreign. Will it resemble us? Us who? We fear it, we hope for it. This precise hour we’re thinking of. It takes its time. It can take a long time, this arrivance. Afterwards, nothing more will be as before.’iv
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Arrivance Once she walked out the door she didn’t look back she had been leaving this moment forever she knew it impossible she was barricaded by flesh she was barred by bone she swallowed rivers of blood she… She had been leaving this moment forever, found space between ribs, sank her feet in sand, sucked at the ocean leaving this moment forever - she caught the tongues of gulls on cliffs she watched the colour drain from her skin, she lost her eyes… She had been leaving this moment forever, She longed for it to arrive.
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‘Where do they come to pass’ Hélène asked ‘these unliveable hours, when do they come to pass, these hours that happen in the foreign me, in the region where I couldn’t stand being me?’v
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The Outside-of-me in mevi From the outside I couldn’t see where I’d gone. Light crumbling, knowing I couldn’t just leave everything to fate and follow myself into the rocks… So, sure, I called the Coast Guard …Search and Rescue. Says the woman in the hi-vis coat, “do you have a picture of her?” “ah she’s a good girl, does what she’s told – reads her books, practices her letters, sits quiet when the old men speak” “That’s not quite what I meant” she said, “the look of her is what we need.” “Well, just like me, but nervous skin, like she’s marble or milk perhaps…” I could tell from her face that she didn’t quite get me. But moving on… “Can you tell us where you last saw her?” I put my palm on my belly, “Oh, just here,” “Yes, just here.” “Grand,” says she, and off to her colleagues, back to the van to start the search, and one of them staying with me, a silver blanket and a cup of sugary tea, as if I was in shock.
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And there we sat, waiting to see if the me that had gone in would come back out again. “It must be like having the ground taken out from under your feet” she said, the volunteer, bored with the silence. “No. It’s not like that… it’s the waters that have given way this time.”vii I don’t expect her to understand, but patient all the same, I hold her hand.
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Hélène Cixous is waiting. Waiting for the hour to arrive. She is waiting and she thinks of love. She thinks of death. And grief. When we mourn, she says, we faint away. ‘Mourning shows us the door, we are dislodged from our interior habitation, an absence moves into our place’viii
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Suture 1 The wound has festered I apologise for the smell I had forgotten to keep it clean I had no cloth to wash it I used what was at hand –some moss to pack it and buttercup seeds, those roots would bind it. 2 I have kept it out of sightwouldn’t want to put you offthe red wool, not as toxic as blood, the white cloth, not as contagious as scars, the silence, not as deadly as words. 3 Ribbon-thin stitches, sealing the last cracks in my heart, are a line of ants carrying blood to the petrified tissue.ix
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As she waits, Hélène wonders if indeed she has missed it altogether. ‘What is worse, in truth, is not that this hour comes, but that we miss it – it’s a unique chance, and almost always, it must be said, we botch it – but not always.’x
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Hélène remembers what Clarice said about wanting somebody to hold her hand. She didn’t want to be a single body.xi Who does? When someone holds my hand, she says, they chase away ‘the limit that threatens my body’.xii Holding hands, waiting with you is not so lonely. ‘I am that finite that wants its infinite’ she whispers, ‘Love infinites me’.xiii It makes freedom possible.
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Before you turn around to leave Stay awhile, do. Here, we can rest. This togetherness Soothes – Shall we call it the Present? Yes. And return me again again again – (Another game unravels becomes strange.)
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Hélène is thinking about Paul. And Jacques. Strangers held closely under the one windy roof. Like lovers. Love needs this rendez-vous of ‘strangers together, and trembling in the wind.’ xiv
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Surrender In this act I give you which self? A battalion on the move, A protective flock, Mustering on the border. In my left hand, your tiny body, Not yet breathingNot yet you. In my right, a garrison of grief, Defending the invasion, Securing the area. This love for you, my child, An enemy stronger than fear. They don’t trust it yet. This love for you my child, Carried on my breath – yes. And yes.xv
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HÊlène is 60. The hour has come to pass. And she writes To me.
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The Mother finds herself at the centre finds the thread that has written her flesh carried in the palm of the other.
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caesura ENDNOTES i
Audience (1) feedback Audience (2) feedback. This person’s feedback continues on the next pages. iii Audience (3) feedback. This person’s feedback continues on the next pages. iv Cixous (1998: 61) v Cixous (ibid: 72) vi Term coined by Cixous (ibid) vii This is a reference to how Cixous writes about the process of grief: ‘First the earth. Later the waters that I lose’ (ibid: 72) viii Cixous (ibid: 70) ix This is a reference to Cixous’ description of the body who avoids feeling pain. She says ‘the thing was happening beyond, over there, and beyond in the very depths of me, where, like someone who is afraid of feeling a lot of pain doesn’t move at all, I didn’t move a thought, I didn’t move my soul, I petrified myself, I knew what was waiting for me, I wasn’t living this time, I didn’t live it…I let it happen’ (ibid:72) x Cixous (ibid:71) ii
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Cixous makes a reference to a piece of writing from Clarice Lispector (ibid:75) Cixous (ibid) xiii ibid xiv ibid xv Cixous writes ‘The mother who loves like she breathes, loves and doesn’t know / it’s the incarnation of a yes’ (ibid:75) xii
This pamphlet formed part of my practice-based PhD: Giving Birth to Maternal Subjectivity: Narrative, rhythm and caesura in an autobiographical practice of birth story-telling. (2017). Aberystwyth University. Funded by Arts & Humanities Research Council and Dept Film & Television Studies, Aberystwyth University. www.tracybreathnach.com
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