Consider Françoise Sagan. Her 1955 novel, Un certain sourire, imagines an older, married man who always drives his automobile too fast. This is not an encompassing character evaluation, however it serves the distinct purpose of setting a clear mark for measurement. From here we can understand two things easily like a surveyor measuring lines: 1) The man is older and married; 2) His fast driving scares me, because I am a stand-in for the novel’s protagonist, Dominique, who is described as a bored twenty-year-old law student. One could also add another point: 3) I am not a bored twenty-year-old law student attending the Sorbonne in the mid-50s but this point can sometimes become debatable because I am always sitting in the back of a fast-moving car.

While Dominique worries in the back seat, I consider how she and this fast-driving man are about to begin fucking. His wife is innocently unaware. In fact, she looks back at Dominique from the passenger seat as the car tears forward, each face reflected in the other. They both share the same fear, which is conspiratorial because shared terror creates an emotional bond. We rarely ask what was lost in this formulation; what was discarded like a stack of outdated ideas which was once a self.  

Which is why we could say that lost is merely the state arising into found; that what is not is also what is found. Even the stars eventually become nothingness. They become not-stars and then they become everything new. This is the way we transform ourselves like a chrysalis; the roadway paved between missing and gone. What has Dominique lost? A certain quantity of what is called innocence, which is in no way to be confused with pieces of what was once a self.

The internet clarifies nothing. Innocence is just a word that means not-meaning. Innocence is what comes before terror. The way you can always turn to the next page. Each a way to say that this is never not surprising; not patient; not textured for easy grasp. How this is not memory; not mindfulness; not that moment; not forgotten. How I can say I am not elated; not crying; not wailing about not knowing; not hoping; not pretending everything is okay. How none of this is important; not considering this important; not understanding the idea of importance, exactly. Not scent; not raspberry; not lemon; not cotton burning down the house like a candle; not like diffuse stardust—but like stardust becoming something new.

We have our mark and can cast our survey line. We can measure the distance between awake and asleep as if innocence were a state from which one could wake. 

We can move. We can move our hands like a priest welcoming God.