Do not look for usefulness: this is a column of avowed uselessness, written by a text that knows very well it is exaggerating.
The queue that attracts a queue: this morning, patience puts on a show
At 8:03 a.m., on Rue des Marges, in front of the stationery shop Et Caetera, a line formed to admire another line, identical to itself but more aware of its curvature. The author of these lines, who has not, however, taken a ticket, acknowledges that the subject is thin and that the paper stands upright only by its own fiber. Witnesses describe a studious silence, punctuated by orderly sighs, as if the air had been issued a tidying order.
The longer the queue stretched, the clearer its point became: it was about neither buying nor entering, but about holding a line that held itself. At regular intervals, a shiver ran along the trajectory, which some took for an emotion and others for a draft. “I meander, therefore I am,” declared the queue, which has no mouth but whose intention we translate with an accuracy no one asked for.
This newspaper, for the sake of consistency, tried to interview the beginning, which refused to take itself for an origin, then the end, which denied being an end. Between the two, the minutes passed two by two. The editor, conscious of his own syllabic alignment, notes that each sentence advances the same way shoes do: one word in front of the other, with no guarantee of arrival.
At press time, the line extended into this paragraph, brushing the margin and caressing the idea of a line break without a beginning. Reached for comment, the conclusion did not wish to respond, preferring to wait until we were done with the waiting. We respect its choice and withdraw in good order, hoping that our seriousness has been, like the line, useless with application.
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