Stillness.
I don’t fully understand it.
I repeat it in my head like an old instruction I never agreed to follow.
Marquis de Sade appears in my reading as something that shouldn’t affect me the way it does.
That’s what I’m ashamed of.
Not the text itself.
But the way I slow down when I read it.
Too slowly.
I tell myself it’s theory.
Body engineering.
Engineering of fixity.
But it never stays only that.
Not with me.
Sometimes the body feels “right” when it doesn’t respond.
As if absence of movement becomes a kind of clarity.
I don’t say that out loud.
Not even here should I.
The word “Sade” leaves an odd echo.
Not clean desire.
Something else.
More uncomfortable.
More quiet.
I catch myself imagining stillness as a discipline.
As something learned.
Step by step.
Reading by reading.
And then comes the part I don’t like admitting:
the more I understand structures of control,
the more attention I give them.
And the more attention I give them,
the harder it is to pretend they don’t affect me.
It’s not pleasure.
Not exactly.
It’s a mental tension that doesn’t resolve.
As if the body becomes an argument.
And I don’t know which side of the argument I’m on.
Sometimes I close the text.
Too fast.
Like I got too close to something cold.
And still I return.
Not as a clear decision.
More like repetition.
That’s the shameful part:
what I read as theory
starts to feel like a form of attention toward myself
that I don’t fully control.
And then I stay quiet.
Not moving.
Not because I try to.
But because it stays.
I read it again today.
That wasn’t the plan.
Just to open it for a moment.
Close it.
Move on to something else.
But I didn’t fully close it.
I left the tab open as if that meant nothing.
I don’t know why I do that.
There are things I don’t dare to name when I’m alone, but they still appear.
Not as clear thoughts.
More like interruptions.
Like something moving underneath what I’m doing.
I tried to focus on other things.
They didn’t work.
Not because I can’t.
But because I keep returning.
Always a second before I realize it.
I caught myself staring at the screen without reading.
Just looking.
Waiting for something to change that doesn’t need to change.
I felt something strange when I closed the physical book.
As if closing it was too final.
As if I shouldn’t do it yet.
I don’t fully understand it.
And that’s what bothers me.
There is nothing concrete forcing me.
Only this kind of attention that stays a little longer than normal.
I wrote this to get it out of my head.
I don’t know if it works.
While writing it, I’m still thinking about it.
That’s the worst part.
I have to move my neck…
