The first signs aren’t words,
they’re physical signs.
The pain makes itself felt. It shoots through my stomach,
changes my breathing, draws my attention back
to what’s burning, tightening, resisting.
Breathing becomes difficult.
Then I draw.
When I draw, the pain disappears.
I’m not trying to forget it. I don’t decide
to turn away from it. I don’t even notice
the moment it fades away.
My gaze enters the drawing.
The surface absorbs me. I am attentive to
the intensity of a hue, to the meeting of two
lines, to the resistance of the paper beneath the
pen tip. What seemed insignificant suddenly takes up
the whole space.
My hand moves forward, returns, slows down. My gaze
follows what is emerging. One stroke
alters another. The sheet becomes my
sole focus.
I no longer know what time it is. I no longer
know how long I’ve been drawing.
Time goes on, but I no longer measure it.
And my body, too, ceases to be a
measure.
I no longer feel its weight.
I no longer feel the pain.
Yet it is fully engaged.
My fingers adjust the pressure. My hand
guides the gesture. My arm accompanies the
movement. My eyes follow the
transformations. My breathing finds its
rhythm.
The body acts at the very moment I cease
to perceive it.
The pain used to take up everything. Now, the
drawing takes up everything.
Between the two, there is no transition. I do not know
at what moment the pain withdrew. I
only realise it is gone when it
returns.
Meanwhile, the body is no longer what
burns, tightens or resists. It becomes precision,
movement, pressure, breath.
It does not disappear.
Its presence is transformed.
What remains is the paper beneath my hand, the material that
settles upon it, the relationships that are formed,
and that concentration which allows almost nothing else to enter.
No more weight to bear.
No more time to count.
I am not absent from my body. I am
entirely engaged in what it is doing,
to the point where I no longer feel it separately from
what it is doing.
Then my hand stops.
I look up.
The room regains its dimensions.
I check the time.
My body regains its weight.
Sometimes the pain returns.
It is then that I realise what has just
happened.
Whilst I was drawing, my body had
not disappeared.
It had become movement.
