Invariably, winter brings me back to the crystalline nature of things. The hallucinatory presence of billions of snow crystals that decompose light at the slightest brush of brightness. It reminds me of my fascination with light throughout my childhood. When I was eight, I had a little lantern that contained a red light, a green light, and a white light. I also owned a small white phosphorescent plastic rosary that I would place for five minutes on the bulb of my bedside lamp — that incandescent lamp, belonging to a now-old technology that heated a tungsten filament until it produced light through Joule heating. Then I would place that object directly on my face, beneath the covers. I was literally drawn into that light. I gorged myself on it, I intoxicated myself with brightness. I buried the little lantern under my blankets and pressed my eyes against its glass to absorb everything. We come from light, and now everyone knows that we are made of the materials from which galaxies are formed: we are stardust. Science is now capable of measuring the halo, the luminescent imprint that surrounds the human body, generated by microcurrents arising from our metabolic activities and from the passage of impulses through the network of nerves of the central nervous system. Recently, science discovered that there exists a network of galaxies that makes the universe resemble a vast luminous brain in which each neuron is made of billions of stars. I am unable to grasp the present moment through this luminous inflorescence. When I observe my hand, I see a structure that belongs to my recent past, since the light reflected from it takes an infinitesimal time to cross the space between my hand and my eye. When I observe the night sky, I see structures from an ancient past, arriving at the end of millions of light-years. So I accept that I am an observer of the past who dreams of the future, in a present moment that I do not possess. I return once more to what my friend Michel Bachant told me about three weeks before his death: one second contains all eternity. Michel was a being of light. Oh oooooooooooooooooo Hummmmmmm Oooooooo
