TENIR
Volume I
The Inner Walk
THE INNER WALK
Volume I
TENIR is an inner crossing. A path of silence, of falling, of rising again, and of light. This first volume opens the walk.
Certain presences teach us to see before we even speak.
This book does not begin.
It resumes.Somewhere before these pages,
a walk has already taken place.Nameless, perhaps.
Without witness, too.Perhaps some lives do this.The walk does not begin here.
It continues.
There are beings
who pass through an entire life
without ever learning to look.They move from one day to the next
as one crosses a temporary place.Quickly.
Without attention.Then, sometimes, there is a calmer moment.Something infinitesimal.A light in a window.
A weariness glimpsed in a face.
A tree that has stood for a very long time.
A presence that seeks nothing.The world seems less distant.Childhood perhaps begins there.Not in age.In the way of receiving what exists
before wishing to possess it.To stay a while beside what still stands.
NERAËL
First listening
Neraël is not a chosen name.
It is a state.It designates the one who perceives before understanding,
Who senses before knowing,
Who listens before naming.Neraël is the first posture:
That of the being still without a role,
Yet already attentive.He does not act.
He stands.Neraël is the one who receives
The world as it is,
Before any decision.
THE SEED
Certain things
do not yet distinguish themselves.They have no form.
No direction.
Not even a name.They hold on.Not in order to become.Only to endure
long enough
that one day
something may begin.
CHAPTER I
First listening
The path ran behind the house.
Few people still took it.
The grass had reclaimed part of the trace.Neraël went there.
He could not have said why.Nothing ever happened there.
Yet when he followed that path, something within him fell silent.The wind passed through the branches.
Sometimes a leaf fell.
Sometimes nothing moved.Then he would stop.The other children went on their way.
He looked.A drop of water hanging from a stem.
An ant disappearing under a stone.
The evening light on the bark of an old trunk.Things so small that others walked past them without seeing.He stayed there until the sun went down.
Then he went home.With no story to tell.
No discovery to announce.And something came back with him.
Law ICertain things become visible
when we stop advancing too fast.
CHAPTER II
What he wanted to show
One evening, he stopped before an old wall covered in moss.
The rain had stopped.
Water still ran down between the stones.
He watched the drops follow the same paths.When he went home, he tried to speak of it.
They told him it was only water.
He nodded.
Of course it was water.
But that was not what he had wanted to show.In the days that followed, he noticed a branch bent by the wind.
A shadow on a path.
A bird hesitating before the storm.When he spoke of these things, the answers returned to the things themselves.
So he kept some observations to himself.Not out of fear.
Out of economy.He looked again.As before.
Law IIWhat we do not say
is not always what we did not perceive.
CHAPTER III
Patience
Neraël went back to the same place.Sometimes nothing happened.
The wind crossed the branches.
The light shifted on the stones.
Then the day came to an end.
So he went home.Other times, the same thing returned.
A flower that kept on opening.
A spider’s web made visible by the dew.
A branch bending its course toward the light.Nothing came all at once.Certain things do not hide.
They take their time.He looked.
Then returned.And without knowing when it had begun,
something became clear.
Law IIIReturning ends by revealing
what a single glance does not show.
CHAPTER IV
The Desire to Leave
For a time, Neraël kept returning.Then one morning, he did not come.Nothing prevented him.
The sky was clear.
The path was open.Yet he walked elsewhere.
For no particular reason.
As if something were already seeking another direction.He followed a path he had never taken.
The trees changed.
The stones changed.
Even the wind seemed different.For a few hours, it was enough.Then something was missing.Not a place.
Not a habit.
Something else.A quiet presence he had never noticed as long as it was there.When evening came, he took the path he knew again.Nothing had changed.
Yet everything seemed more alive.
Law IVWhat is missing
reveals what nourished.
CHAPTER V
What does not answer
Neraël followed the path for several days.He crossed woods he did not know.Clearings.
Valleys.
Places without a name.Sometimes he stopped.
Not to observe.
To listen.Then he remained motionless.
For a few moments.But nothing came.
No sign.
No voice.
No revelation.Only the wind in the branches.
The movement of the grasses.
The passing of the clouds.Then he resumed his walk.
Other places appeared.
Other silences.He could stay there.
Without receiving.
Without understanding.
Without concluding.And yet set out again at peace.
Law VAll that matters
does not answer.
CHAPTER VI
The Ordinary
The clouds passed over the hills.
Then faded away.Neraël watched them.The wind remained the wind.
The light remained the light.
The distant song of a bird crossed the valley, then was lost in the air.Nothing sought to become something else.That day, he stopped on the high ground.Before him, the valley stretched to the blue lines of the horizon.
A stream followed its course among the grasses.
A path disappeared behind a fold in the land.A dry-stone wall crossed the slope.
Stone after stone.
Without haste.
Without delay.Neraël approached it.
He laid his hand on the nearest stone.It still kept the warmth of the day.The wind passed through the grasses.
The water continued on its course.
A shadow crossed the slope.
Then vanished.Neraël withdrew his hand.
He resumed his walk.
Law VIWhat is enough does not announce itself.
CHAPTER VII
The Rhythm
The path descended among the tall grasses.
The wind passed over them.
They bent.
Then straightened again.Neraël walked.
He looked less behind him.
And less ahead.His steps followed one another along the path.Sometimes the wind dropped.
The grasses stayed still.Then the wind returned.
They bent.
Then straightened again.He kept on advancing.No longer against time.
No longer with it.
Inside it.When evening came, the hills grew dark.
Neraël continued on his way.
At the same pace.
Law VIIEach thing that lasts beats to its own measure.
CHAPTER VIII
The Low Voices
Some people spoke as if afraid of waking something.
Even in an empty room.Their voices stayed close to them.
Like a low light in a house in the evening.The child listened to them longer than the others.Not for the words.
For the silences between the sentences.Others entered everywhere at once.
They cut across gestures.
Moved the calm aside.
Closed the rooms again.So he sometimes preferred to stay near those who spoke little.An old woman who looked a long while before answering.
A man who took off his hat before entering.He did not know why these presences seemed closer to him.But they took nothing.
Law VIIISome voices
make more room
by falling silent.
CHAPTER IX
The Silence after the rain
After certain rains,
the world seemed to wait.The paths grew darker.
The trees held the water longer.
The stones still gleamed in the shadow.The child liked to walk at that moment.Before the voices returned.Even the birds
left space between their songs.There were times when no sound
crossed an entire place.Not a breath of wind.Not a door.Not another step on the damp earth.
Law IXThere are silences
in which the world
becomes whole again.
CHAPTER X
The Houses that listen
Some houses
changed with the seasons.Not only outside.
Inside as well.The child noticed it from the doorway.A room open in summer
no longer breathed the same in winter.The boards shifted.
The walls held certain sounds.In the evening,
some houses seemed to listen.Voices were lowered there.A cup set down on a table
resounded.A chair moved
could be enough
to disturb the silence of a room.Then one waited before speaking.
Law XSome places
listen
to what has lived in them.
CHAPTER XI
The Gestures that Soothe
Some people
entered a room
without startling it.They did not take up all the space.They opened a door.
Waited a moment.
Looked before stepping forward.Even their hands
seemed to know the silence of things.A cup set back down.
A coat folded without a sound.
A window closed before nightfall.Then places
changed with them.Objects found their place again.They gave things
the time to exist.
Law XISome hands
make silence
come alive.
CHAPTER XII
The Places Where One Stays
There were places
where people slowed down.Even for no reason.A gate at the edge of a field.
An old bench by a wall.
A path that went down toward the water.Conversations changed there.Voices lost something.Weariness too.Some people
stayed silent.As if the place
held back part of the noise they carried.The child observed this without saying so.Not happy.Not better.Closer
to what they were
when they ceased to struggle.So he sometimes went back to those places.Without looking for anything at all.He sat down.Listened to the wind in the grass.The wood shifting in the fences.
The water against the stones.The world breathed around him.
Law XIISome places
lighten beings
without asking anything of them.
CHAPTER XIII
The Weary Places
Some houses
kept a tension in their walls.Even when empty.One spoke faster there.
Gestures grew sharper.
Silences did not hold for long.Something
always seemed to be waiting for a rupture.A door slamming.
A voice rising.
An object moved too abruptly.Then bodies
were less at ease.Even seated.Even still.He sensed
that they were holding back something else.Not peace.Something worn.As if too many gestures,
too many words,
had wearied the air itself.He set off again.And when he found a quiet path once more,
his breath changed.The wind resumed its place.The trees too.And the world
stopped contracting around him.
Law XIIISome places
exhaust beings
before they even speak.
CHAPTER XIV
The Words that Weary
Some words
left places heavier after them.The child sometimes noticed it
in silent kitchens,
in meals that went on too long,
in rooms where no one looked at the others.The words kept floating
even after the conversations had ended.Not all of them.Those that pushed.
Those that wanted to convince.
Those that filled everything.After them,
silences no longer rested.They became cautious.Then gestures changed too.One put things away faster.
One spoke less freely.
Eyes avoided certain places.But he sensed
that some voices
took more than they left.And others did the opposite.A few calm words
could make a room breathable again.Like an open window.He recognized voices
by what they did
to the silence around them.
Law XIVSome words
take
more than they give.
CHAPTER XV
What Remains after the Voices
After certain departures,
places changed.Not because of the objects left behind.Something else remained.A way of opening a door.
Of setting down a cup.
Of crossing a room without startling it.The child noticed this
in certain houses that had grown calmer.Sometimes,
an absence made gestures more visible.Silence took on their shape again.Then certain kitchens
seemed to be waiting for someone.Certain windows
kept a particular light in the evening.And a few paths
seemed to slow around an invisible memory.Only a trace.As when the wind goes on for a moment
in the branches
after passing through the trees.Something of them
goes on breathing there.
Law XVSome beings
remain in places
through the way they inhabited them.