I do not notice the exact moment when I start looking at the flesh this way.
I only know it happens later.
When it is already too late to separate intention from reflex.
The room light is on, but it does not illuminate anything in particular.
It only holds surfaces together.
The skin does not appear as a complete body.
It appears in fragments.
The edge of an arm.
The tension of a jaw that was not being thought.
The minimal movement of a breath that does not settle.
Sade is not present here as an idea.
He is present in the fact that I can no longer see without organizing what I see.
But that organization does not come first.
It comes after impact.
After the microsecond in which something in me has already reacted.
I catch myself holding the gaze a moment longer than necessary.
There is no decision.
Only continuity.
The air feels denser near the screen, although I know this is not real.
Distance does not disappear.
It reorganizes.
There is a slight delay between what I see and what I understand.
And in that delay something settles.
Not as thought.
As tension.
It is not clear desire.
It is not rejection.
It is a form of attention that does not switch off when it should.
The body is still, but not at rest.
There is a vigilance I did not choose.
And yet it is operating.
Flesh stops being something I observe from the outside.
It becomes something that includes me without asking permission.
There is no theory here.
Only a sequence of small adjustments.
A shift in posture.
A pause that lasts too long before looking away.
A minimal return to the same image.
And again.
Not as conscious repetition.
But as continuity that does not need justification.
Sade appears at that exact point.
Not as a name.
But as the impossibility of the gaze becoming innocent again after having seen in this way once.
And what is unsettling is not what is seen.
It is that there is no clear exit from the way of seeing.
The image does not end.
It only stops being viewable from the same distance.
And in that reduced distance there is no clarity.
There is density.
Something that is not resolved by looking less.
Nor by looking more.
Only by looking differently without knowing how.
Sade is not present as a concept.
He arrives after the fact, if he arrives at all.
As if the name is always an afterimage of something that already happened in the body.
The digital disconnection does not feel like a decision.
It feels like a shift in pressure.
The device turns off.
But the room does not return to emptiness.
Something remains where the signal used to be.
Not gone.
Just unformed.
There is a moment when I place the phone face down.
No reason.
The sound against the table is sharper than expected.
I don’t pick it up again.
But I also don’t forget it.
And that is the strange part.
No system yet.
Only small displacements.
Breathing without noticing it.
A hand staying still longer than necessary.
A screen that is no longer active but still present.
The experience comes first.
Meaning comes later.
Always later.
(no title that fixes it)
The room is silent.
But not clean silent.
A leftover kind of silence.
Something that has not fully stopped existing.
Dust on the table is suddenly more present.
It has not changed.
Only attention has.
The body is not calm.
Not restless either.
Something in-between that does not resolve into a name.
As if external pressure had stopped pushing for a moment.
And that is not relief.
It is suspension.
Sade is not needed here yet.
If he appears, he appears too late.
And that lateness is the only precise thing about him.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
