Breyten Breytenbach - All One Horse

In the beginning there is God. Or Creative Principle. If we take it that there must be a start and a stop, then there should be some entity to begin with or who/which can make the beginning begin? But we are not there yet so there can be no if. If comes later. Let’s start all over again.

In the beginning there is the Word. (This is plagiarism.) Who writes the Word? Ah! Read for Word a synonym for creative act. You have to leave room for assumptions. If you don’t leave room nothing can be created, not even Nothing. If you leave room for synonyms you have a splitting of cells, procreation, multiplication, a filling of the Void. Where the Void comes from? It is in the nature of the Void neither to come nor to go. And I don’t know who you are. Not yet. Don’t leave the room!

(But if I am it must be because you are, my brother. And since there’s a consciousness conscious of its being in the act of searching for synonyms, it must be an I. If the looking is written down it must emanate from a First Person, even if anonymous, even if produced by the words. The unsayable must be hemmed in. Welcome to the Land of If!)

Now that we have filled some space we can deduce that there is Existence. It would thus be only logical to assume that in the beginning there is/was Potential. How else did we get to the filling of the page?

No Existence without Limitation. In the beginning there are instructions. (Read directives, imperatives, no-go areas , etc.) God is Word or Flesh or some such. It doesn’t really matter. However, since Word is God there will be a fleshing out as the word can only be in becoming. I mean that every word has a double being: the word as such and that which it brings word of. Another word at a pinch. And the sky is the limit.

This goes on for a long time. The sky goes on for a long time but not forever — due to feeble mindsight. The human mind starts all things without being able to see to the end of them. It is called spinning the mind.

Anyway, we shall jump ahead and take it that we already know what we mean when we say First and Day. So, in the beginning there is God who we take to be the Word and all the rest. God has the instructions in word form. Let’s hope he can read. (Who gave him the instructions? Let’s not start all over again!) On the first day he creates firstness and therefore two and the so ons followed by copulation, as also day which calls up night (since otherwise it could not be ‘day’), or the warm hollow for copulation. As the mirror creates the image. The image creates the mirror. Imagine Imago! Imagine I!

In the beginning I had the intention of writing you this so as to introduce you to Story. Do you still doubt? Are you not now reading these words? If you don’t I don’t exist which makes no difference and we have no argument to pursue with one another. If we have no argument we have no way or need to recognize each other and so on back to square none. No Story to sit on your lap, no Flesh to warm with the caresses of Existence. In that case I didn’t write and so there was no I to be manifested.

All of the above I started a long time ago and I now forget what purpose I had in mind. I do see nevertheless that I have just given you a concise explanation of the history of creation. It is because there is creation that I am God continually creating Itself.

God, the One I look at in the black mirror, the Other — is dead. (Creation doesn’t stop with consciousness.) He died of neglect and crass ignorance. People didn’t look after him. To the extent that he might have been no more than an image in People’s mind.