Lost in the Forest

PART I: EXPLAINING THE DEPARTURE

 

I*MAN

 

Seventeen kilometres ; Seventeen kilometers! That's how I got lost. That's how I started to lose myself. Not just seventeen kilometres… but seventeen thousand kilometres! I walked, walked for a long time, until I got lost… Like that, like a call. One day when I was in front of my house, I was called. The roads were calling me! It was the path that called my steps. I was suffocating, I was asphyxiating from not feeling the forest. I had to walk… Walk, relentlessly walk. The walls of my house had become a prison, the dark roof that I had nevertheless built with my hands, seemed to collapse at any moment… And I collapsed with it. I was a peasant or a lumberjack; I was a fisherman or a thief, I don't know anymore, what I know is that I wasn't myself… Was I only going to find out by walking, by getting lost? All this is less certain, but I was going to take the risk of getting lost to find myself.

The first thousand kilometers were easy. Everything seemed familiar to me. I realized that everywhere I went, everywhere was only my fellow human beings, people like me, peasants, woodcutters, fishermen or thieves… All lived without asking themselves any more questions, guided by daily life. and toil to be done in fear of tomorrow.

I, who had never left my village, had just been to the nearest village – five kilometers away – how can I explain to myself that suddenly I wanted to see the forest?

From the forest, there were many around my house, the Bois, the little Bois. This one I knew. But it was the others, the ones I didnt know that I wanted to see. Those I didnt know.

I suddenly wanted to lose myself in the smell of fir, resin and earth; let my sight be lost in clearings of light or in dark groves; let my ears be on the lookout for the slightest cracking of leaves, the slightest animal slipping in the ferns.

All this I thought I already knew. There was a little wood by my house. But I had to forget everything. What I thought I knew, I did not know.

We must forget to believe. You have to forget everything, stop believing and really live...

It was then the ideas that crossed me. And yet I have never been a great sage or a great philosopher, you could have asked my mother, she would have told you. I was in front of my house when everything seemed cramped: my house, my clothes, the land stretching out in front of me, it seemed to be calling me. She said to me, “Come on, come on! Leave your life of misery for me, leave everything you think you have for me, come, come discover me, take off one by one my forest clothes which smell of creaking wood and wet earth…” She spoke to me like that, like a female witch. And I went like that towards her, in my poverty of the moment. I had old, worn-out clothes and old shoes that I no longer have. She said to me “Come as you are, I will make you rich with a treasure that the others will never have, and with my alliance, you will be the only safe”. Just think, I who have never had anything but my old cabin, the call of the land, you can't refuse...

The first seventeen kilometers, the shoes held. The seventeen others too… The thousand others still. But after, after, I found myself barefoot, with nothing to hide the nudity of my possessions, they were there, offered to the open air and to the earth, to its caresses and its wounds. With nothing to hide from her, we were finally equal, each having nothing to hide, with no other protection than ourselves, our flesh, forest flesh or organic flesh… Suffering, struggling, in hand-to-hand combat.

 

 

I * WOMAN

 

“It was one night. I wouldn't say a full moon night, because it wasn't. It was a gibbous moon, it shone brightly, it is true, but it was not full. It seems too easy that full moon nights drive you crazy. I was not crazy. I was called, that's all. She told me to leave my life where it was and to follow her… I had no choice, I didn't try to understand, it was like that, I wouldn't have had a choice.

I don't know how long I walked, and I'm still walking, my steps advance before me, they walk for me, it's not me who guides them. I advance like that, guided by the unknown. I don't know if he's a good guide, I don't know if it's for my good or my bad, or maybe either good or bad… I don't know anything and don't try to find out.

I let myself be guided, that's all.

​

PART II: FIRST FEARS

 

 

II * MAN

 

“I've come so far that I'm afraid I can't go back. I walked for so long… I didn't wonder if my feet hurt, otherwise I would have stopped, I wouldn' have continued walking. But I wanted to see, something in me wanted to see. I had to walk, keep walking. Despite myself, my feet moved forward, continued to walk. I was a wandering ghost. Anyone would have seen me, would have taken me for a ghost. But I haven't met anyone. Animals only fled in my path. I must have traveled thousands of kilometres. What are thousands of miles when you're like a ghost, wandering, lost. Because it must be said, now I am lost. And I'm scared. Yes, I admit, I'm scared. Now where I am I am lost and scared. Besides, I don't even know where I am, and that frightens me even more. All my fears resurface, make me feel guilty… I feel consumed by guilt. I don't know why, I don't know what I'm guilty of, but I think I am. I must have committed a fault of which I have no memory, or else I carry the fault of another and it gnaws at me. It forces me to move forward for no reason, to flee.

 

 

II * WOMAN

 

Night is about to fall...

Night is falling…

The night will envelop me, suffocate me, drown me...

The night is a velvet sheet, a heavy pane of velvet...

A caress of death.

The night is heavy like an overly heavy coat.

The night is a boat towards the last morning.

The night is the last river of my life.

The night frightens me, and I'm cold and shivering. My dress is wet from the dark mists. It's so dark it's almost as if I were blind… I feel like I was born blind. The night settled on my eyes like a band of thick velvet. Soon there are so many fabrics that I trip over them and fall. The fall scratches me and I feel the blood flowing… I'm a fountain of blood, it won't stop. I must be red now, before my dress was white, it must be red now, but it's pitch black and I can't see anything.

​

PART III: WALK, STOP

 

III * MAN

 

-One hundred and seventy thousand kilometers, I must have done that. At least I believe, that's what I estimated, because now, where I am, everything is very different. I don't recognize anything. I&m having trouble counting, but I must be getting closer to the hundred-seventy-thousand kilometers… It's much more than what I could have learned in school. I have never learned so much. I haven't been in school long. I had to work to earn a living. I didn't learn to count that much. Yet wood was my job, I think I was a lumberjack, I had to cut trunks, plant trees... but I don't recognize anything I see, everything seems new and strange to me, yet all this must seem familiar to those who live here, as my forests must seem foreign to those who live in these lands that I do not know. The foreigner is a foreigner for the other, and his country just as much. Sometimes I feel like a stranger to myself. I no longer know myself. I'm not sure what I think anymore. I don't really know who I am anymore, when I meet a stream to quench my thirst there, I feel like I no longer recognize myself there, it's someone else I see, a stranger staring at me... This changed face, this beard, it's not mine, these features, it's not mine, it's not me. And then it seems to me that there is behind me, behind my back, in fact, behind the back of this stranger, like a shadow, a heavy and dark presence. The weight of remorse. Fault. And it keeps me from sleeping. So I walk to forget her and flee her… And I don't sleep anymore, I walk day and night.

I made myself shoes with found bark, vines, ivy… And then I wore them out too. I found myself again barefoot and black. But you had to hide them from me, I couldn't bear to see them anymore.

There, I have to rest, I can't take it anymore, too bad if the wild beasts devour me. And the night begins to fall, again, once again… Always, will it never stop? It is like this, it is endless. Always a day, always a night. Now it's half-light, I don't like half-light, it's an uncertain moment when the anxieties grow even greater, immense like shadows, a thousand shadows above me. A sky heavy with suspicion, so I suffocate, it makes me suffocate. I feel weak and overwhelmed. I understand those distant peoples who feared the sky falling on their heads, and even there, if it doesn't rain, I fear that this darkness will kill me. She could strangle me by surprise, right there, while I rest for a moment. I have to breathe, too bad… I have to breathe for a moment…

In the half-light, these wild trees look like well-trimmed bushes, these paths that one guesses traced by a few wild beasts, tidy, square-cut alleys. There are so many paths, so many roads that must be chosen. And if we don't choose quickly enough, the forest will take us as one of its trees. All these bushes… these trees that we see – I don't know anymore – are only poor eras like me. Here are two paths open to me, I don' know which to choose. You have to hurry, you have to choose!

 

 

III * WOMAN

 

If you pass this garden, you'll never come back,

Besides, it's not a garden, it's a forest.

It's not a safe place, it's the place where your soul is lost.

It's not the beginning, it's where it all ends.

Everything, absolutely everything !

Since everything is so frail, except the forest that devours me, except the plants with enormous roots, except the beasts that scrutinize me for my still tender flesh...

Should I keep walking, or stop?

I would never come back, no matter, we never come back where we came from, and if we do, we never come back as we left, we are changed, we are no longer the same.

So there's no point in staying. You know it well…

Can't ignore it :

If you pass this garden, you will never come back.

Besides, it's not a garden, it's a forest.

It's not a safe place, it's the place where your soul is lost.

It's not the beginning, it's where it all ends.

Everything, absolutely everything!

All…

​

PART IV: SCRUPULES AND PUNISHMENTS

 

IV * MAN

 

Now I must have traveled a million kilometres, maybe a million seven hundred thousand. One million seven hundred thousand. From now on I must stop even if specters with sharp nails scratch my back and force me to move forward. I don't know what I did. I still don't know what I did… Or what they did, this unknown fault that I carry. My feet are starting to bleed, my worn-out shoes no longer fit my feet, I have to continue on foot, my nails are even jumping… I don't dare look at my feet anymore. They horrify me. They are monsters at my feet, they are bleeding, scratched, cut, black with dirt and infections that I pick up here and there. They are the horror of my soul, my reflection, my mirror. I'm afraid of being what I see, and I can't see myself as a whole, my only glimpse of myself is the treacherous reflection of the water which sends me back to this unknown, and these feet, these filthy visions. Soon they'll rot and poison me, it won't be long… But it's not yet, they're just hideous, as long as it's like that, I have to keep walking.

My back hurts, I'm sure there are scratches on my back… The trees, the branches, what do I know, the harpies… They're deep scratches that go right to my heart.

 

I must not stop, rest, fall asleep. Here, the woods are not safe and I would risk being devoured by some beast that passes. I must not sleep... I must not sleep... I must not sleep... I must not...

 

 

IV * WOMAN

 

- Enough ! No more noise, no more noise, nothing but nothingness.

I no longer want these noises, these cries, these whispers, these murmurs… It seems that the forest sends back a secret that I cannot understand, that I must not understand. I've had enough of these whispers in my ears. Couldn't I understand once and for all, just once, what is being said.

I'm there on the lookout, I'm tired, I'm waiting to see what will happen, I'm afraid, I'm shaking, I keep my four senses awake in order to guess what's going to happen, to understand, to surprise the future . But it's a fog that strangles me in its madness.

Being afraid would be useless, we must still move forward, do not ask questions, move forward at all costs, what else to do?

My soul is no longer quite mine. My body turns into an empty envelope. Perhaps behind me are strewn, like pebbles, the dead skins of my soul on which the ghost-monsters throw themselves like vultures. There is no way back. My steps erase while walking the traces of the road travelled.

The day will come...

We will have to take the night.