...of self-awareness

I would like, most of all, to talk about silence. A silence which is neither an absence of words nor a mental blockage. A silence which is an accession to a domain beyond the bounds of language, an animated silence, so to speak, a relationship of active equality between the world and man. The botched universe of immediate significance, of useful words and actions, is no longer particularly important. What counts is this harmony of rhythms. One cannot forget this journey, this passage of thought into material existence.
In the centre of this flat countryside, on the Ayutthaya road, for example, when the terrible heat of noon holds sway. Steam rises from the scorching ground. I look around me. All I can see is the great expanse of earth moist with sweat, sweeping straight to the sky, with no horizon in between. There is no sound, and the light bounces back upon the huge puddle. There is no movement. The whole experience is indescribable. Then, quite naturally, without the slightest wrench, words, ideas and actions have all ceased to exist. All that remains is this prolongation of time over space. Somewhere in this land of inherited wisdom, people are living, are working in the rice fields. Their thoughts and words are present, mingled with this soil and this water. It is as though, gently and smoothly, the veil separating me from reality had grown thinner, had worn away its texture, ready now to rip apart so that the great forces may pass through. It has become transparent, almost transparent. I can just make out, through its immobility, the blurred symbols of the replies that are about to flow forward. They are the symbols of silence.
Or else, sitting in the bows of the boat, on the river. The heat glows on the metal-edged waves. Square-stemmed canoes plough upstream, through the bulging mass of water that flows between rows of wooden houses. Their motors screech. And, that too, is silence. For the weighty river is a voice; and what this voice says is more important and more beautiful than a poem.
In the hot night, cockroaches prowl. The booths of a fair have been set up inside the temple’s courtyard. Men, women, and children are squatting on the ground, in front of one of the booths, watching a play in which the masked actors are at this moment frozen in quivering poses, while music blares from the loudspeakers. The quickened rhythms of the Auk Phassa, the nasal songs of the Rabam Dawadeung, the intoned chants of the Ramayana. Old, violent tableaux under the neon lights, tableaux of a continuing life, music born of the sounds of the world, magic rhythms that one no longer hears, silence which demands that I should listen, that I should at last stop interrupting what is being ceaselessly communicated to me.
Rhythm of the day and the night, rhythm of the baths, rhythm of the Ja-Ké, rhythm of the pitch-accented language of Klong verses, of Kap and Klon verses. Rhythm of the light, of the rains, of the architectures whose roofs brandish claws. Rhythm of the wooden houses whose verandas slope gently downward so that the evening breeze can waft its way as far as the sleeping bodies inside. All these rhythms are silence, because they extinguish other rhythms in me, because they oblige me to be quiet.
This silence from beyond words is not apathetic. This peace is not a sleep. Together, they are a rampart built against the aggressions of the sun, of noise, of war. Pride and willpower are written on the naked face of this woman standing in the centre of her canoe. On her fixed mask, cast from the primordial matrix of her race, is written the text of the ancient deed whereby this people exchanged its soul with that of this piece of land. Every day, in the centre of the river, this face confronts the invisible enemy. She is not aware of the fact, no one really suspects it, but this combat is joined each day, each minute, and it is a mortal combat. Is she even aware that she is victorious? Is she aware of the strength and violence that animate her, when with her slow swaying movement she leans on the oar, propelling the fragile craft beneath her feet into the centre of the river? She is neither aware nor unaware, for she is she, and this river is she, and each of her gestures is noble because it is not gratuitous. She describes her destiny, her civilization.
Against the fearful noise that threatens every man, against hatred and anguish, she sets the harmony and peace of her silence. And at moments, beneath the enormous pressure of this sun, in the presence of this flat, waterlogged land bereft of horizon, or else in the face of the giddy swirl of this crowd with similar faces, similar thoughts, all moved by the same mysterious breeding instinct, this silence opens the way to a rare miracle that is the privilege of lands of self-awareness: the miracle of perceiving, through the fine net curtain separating us from reality, the exact design if the adventure.

[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]