For this Translation Tuesday, we’re bringing you an essay by French writer Alba E. Nivas, translated by Annuska Angulo Rivero. Beginning with a simple daily greeting, Nivas ponders what it means to be anchored to the world; she plunges into a meditation on the invisible rhythms of care, labor, and waste that sustain a city and a society. She deftly travels between personal and planetary scales, tracing connections from a Parisian courtyard to colonial legacies, domestic chores to Hindu cosmology. What forms the core of human consciousness, and what can we gain by giving up the idea of “humanity” entirely—instead, embracing an awareness of the myriad lifeforms that surround us and constitute our earth? It is an attempt to uncover, out of contemporary life, glimpses of a profound, interconnected vitality.
“Bonjour,” she greets me every morning. Sometimes we cross paths in the entry hall of my building, other times on the corner where I lock my bike near the subway entrance. At that hour, Paris streets are just beginning to fill with people on their way to work, parents holding their children’s hands, heading to school. Gradually, the pale morning light thickens with purposeful human motion. Eyes still heavy with sleep, most people avoid looking at each other, as if trying to hold on a little longer to the warmth of oblivion before surrendering to the strange rituals of routine. This woman, though, always smiles at me with a clean, direct gaze, as if we knew each other, even when she’s chatting away on her phone in what might be Urdu or Punjabi, probably with someone in a very different time zone. Every time, she seems more awake than I am. Somehow, the kindness of her greeting snaps me back to planet Earth. My day starts.
Even though municipal policies have drastically reduced traffic in the city center, at this hour delivery vans crowd the streets, supplying shops, hotels and restaurants. Reluctantly, drivers of buses and cars suppress their impatience as the vans load and unload, blocking their way. We cyclists, driven by haste, dart around them, sometimes swerving onto sidewalks to a chorus of verbal abuse from pedestrians. There is tension in the air. We all feel like cogs in this hungry, about-to-wake-up machine, propelled by a relentless rhythm and wrenched from our quiet, domestic time and space. Our tiny, electrified Parisian lairs will sit empty for a few hours. Hundreds of thousands of men and women head out in pursuit of a paycheck, leaving disarray behind to rule their homes.
Silence roams freely among the dirty laundry scattered on the floor. Dust settles quietly on books. Food crusts over in pots and pans. Plates pile up in the sink. Abandoned, tired of inertia, things seem to riot. They demand revenge on our fast, distracted lives, too busy to care for them, to clean them, to set them in order. They weigh on our consciousness. Who hasn’t thought of Sisyphus while carrying heavy grocery bags or cleaning the kitchen after a family dinner? We yearn to escape the cyclical doom of domestic chores, to disentangle ourselves from the endless thread of thankless, repetitive tasks demanded by material survival.
SHIVA. The first time I saw the ad was at a bus stop. Next to the name of the Hindu god, the text promised the happiness of returning each day to a clean and tidy home. Daily magic. The ad also featured the face of a dark-skinned, middle-aged man. The sparkle in his smiling eyes caught my attention: a serene but determined invitation to trust in their positive power. At first, I didn’t realize it was an ad for a cleaning service. One doesn’t usually associate men with that kind of work. And this particular man had a slightly triumphant air, far from the quiet demeanor of those who clean other people’s things. In fact, most of them are women, many of them with hard, even heartbreaking lives, who carry their fate with quiet dignity. For many, this job is a ticket out of their country of origin, or perhaps a way to improve life for those they love. I often imagine this might be the case for the middle-aged woman who brightens my mornings.
The only thing I know about her is that she works for an elderly German lady who lives in a small house next to our building. It’s an old single-family house with an unusual floor plan, boasting a tiny but enviable garden carved out of a corner of the inner courtyard. At its center stands a large wild cherry tree: my totem. I revere it from my kitchen window. Alone among the century-old buildings, it has become, over the years, an ally, at once intimate and distant, narrating to me the passing of the seasons. I like to picture its roots weaving through gravel, digging deep into the soil and anchoring themselves in real time, drawing on the Earth’s unfathomable power. Its presence fills me with hope in the future, as if simply contemplating it could offer refuge and nourishment, the way its delicate white blossoms do for the hungry pigeons that descend on our inner courtyard every spring. In two or three days, the feasting birds strip away the wonderful display of the blooms.
Sometimes I run into her in the afternoon, carrying the trash out to the bins in the courtyard. Around this time, garbage trucks begin roaring down the street. A municipal worker comes to empty our building’s containers. He is a young man, also dark skinned, always wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his face. He moves so quickly, I’ve never managed to get a proper look at him. When the truck stops, the men hook the bins onto a mechanical arm that lifts and empties them into the vehicle’s terrible jaws. The noise of objects and food waste clanging and shattering is jarring, as is the ruthless efficiency with which everything simply vanishes. The men jump back into the back of the truck and carry on with their route.
VISHNU would be a more fitting name for a house-cleaning agency. In Hinduism, among the three aspects of divinity, Shiva is the god of destruction, a profoundly ambivalent power, at once terrifying and benevolent, symbolizing perpetual universal motion: he destroys in order to create anew. Vishnu, by contrast, is the preserver of the manifest universe. As he sleeps, reclining on the endless serpent Ananta, this supreme deity dreams new life cycles into being. When he wakes, a lotus flower blooms from his navel, and from it the third deity emerges: Brahma, the creator of matter. It is telling that the god responsible for maintaining the universe, say, the one who tends to its daily affairs, does so while asleep, or at best half-awake. He is absent from life, or his presence goes unnoticed. Something similar happens in the domestic sphere, as if the gestures and actions that sustain our bodies, restore order, and tend to our things are not relevant. They are excluded from the script; they sit offstage, out of the spotlight. We would love to doze off like Vishnu and wake up to find everything already done.
The City of Light. Each year, about thirty million tourists from all over the world flock to this city, drawn by an ideal of refinement and beauty. I see them every day, wandering the streets, dazzled by the luxury and grandeur of the buildings and public squares. As they stroll along the theatrical Haussmanian boulevards, past gleaming boutiques and chic restaurants, it’s easy to forget the city’s less glorious past—the one not portrayed in the Louvre’s paintings. It’s hard to imagine what European society would have become without the energy extracted from the colonized lands and peoples, renewed through the centuries. What would this city be without all the invisible hands that clean its streets, subways, and trains, maintain its sewers, drains, boilers, electrical grids, traffic lights and public fixtures? Every day, a myriad of repetitive, unremarkable gestures feed the ravenous metabolism of consumer society. And yet, the heirs of colonial wealth feel threatened and inclined to expel migrants and tighten borders. Day by day, the identitarian discourse that stubbornly denies the reality of our interconnected planet grows stronger.
The great throttle. Just three centuries of burning fossil fuels have been enough to usher in a new geological era, one whose consequences we are only beginning to grasp. From a human perspective, population growth and technological advances in production and transportation have exponentially expanded our interactions across the globe. The flow of energy and matter has escalated to such a degree that it has overflown the course of history. For thousands of years, human communities evolved in relative isolation, weaving dense tapestries of beliefs and perception, each profoundly different from the next. Now, they are forced to coexist. Each of these worldviews holds valuable insights; they are the petals of a blossoming human consciousness. The problem is, every civilization tends to see itself at the center, as the bearer of some superior essence. In us humans, an intimate and almost automatic atavistic fear of difference persists. And the social tensions unleashed by the destruction of ancient nests¹ are becoming more visible every day.
The human animal. Global capitalism, which has radically transformed the conditions of life on Earth, has not managed to dismantle the constraints of Homo sapiens, the sentient predator. While our complex nervous system has opened us to the vastness of the universe, that same sensibility also amplifies the terrors embedded in our mammalian bodies. It often seems as though much of the white Western world would rather cryogenically freeze its identity than reckon with the systemic evolution of our species, preferring to wash the blood from the terrestrial genome than to engage with its legacy. The illusion of separation persists. The fear of the Other prevails. We remain prisoners of a psyche that severs subject from object, slicing reality into distinct, manageable pieces. Even as the crown jewel of Earth’s evolutionary process, the human nervous system struggles to integrate its dual processing capabilities. Verbal language, which defines and divides reality, often impairs our connection to the world. Body consciousness reverts to the instinctive drive for self-preservation.
Lovelock. I’ve always found it amusing that the man who formulated the Gaia hypothesis in the 1960s was named Lovelock. Beyond the debates and differing interpretations among scientists and social theorists, the hypothesis—now considered a theory—that the interaction of all organisms creates the physical and chemical conditions necessary to sustain life on Earth has played a crucial role in dismantling the Cartesian paradigm that founded the domination and exploitation of Nature by humans. The ontological shift towards a vision of co-evolution between all beings and the planet is, however, a slow and arduous process, like giving birth, marked by apparent moments of stagnation. It is not a simple intellectual transformation, even if it is both profound and collective; it also requires a parallel development of brain and nervous system. In his 1907 book The Intelligence of Flowers², the French playwright, poet and essayist Maeterlinck wrote:
It would not be too bold to affirm that there are no beings more or less intelligent, but a scattered, general intelligence, a kind of universal fluid that penetrates diversely the organisms it encounters, depending on whether they are good or bad conductors of consciousness. Mankind would represent, until now, upon this earth, the realm of life that offered the least resistance to this fluid that the religions call divine. Our nerves would be the wires along which this subtler electricity would spread. The circumvolutions of our brain would form in some way the electric coil in which the force of the current would multiply, but this current would be of no other nature, would come from no other source than that which passes through the stone, the star, the flower, or the animal.
The magic of language seems to have used the creator of the Gaia Theory’s name to point directly to the resistance against that subtle current, that fluid that penetrates and interconnects all living beings. How might the psychic barriers that shape our perception fall at last? How do we unlock love? The pressure is mounting. Shiva, the god of destruction and transformation, appears to rule the world stage. In the Promethean heat of his macabre dance, he seems intent on reducing all human illusions, beliefs and slanders to ash.
I feel a fleeting sense of relief each evening as the garbage truck disappears, loaded with my street’s trash. The sidewalks empty. The roar fades. And yet, I can’t shake the unease about the fate of all this waste generated day after day, week after week. Poet A.R. Ammons was haunted for years by the image of a vast landfill in the Florida lowlands, until it gave rise to his extraordinary epic poem Garbage³. Drawing a brilliant parallelism between the challenges of old age, the evolution of language, and the excesses of consumer society, the poem radiates a disquieting clarity. Ammons has no qualms about plunging his poetic nose right into the physical, mental and spiritual refuse of our time. With remarkable ease and a surprising blend of tones and registers, Garbage reveals the poet’s deep geologic and scientific knowledge. The stench and rot don’t stop him from glimpsing through a slightly ajar door:
Where but in the very asshole of comedown is
redemption; as where but brought low, where
but in the grief of failure, loss, error do we discern
the savage afflictions that turn us around:
where but in the arrangements love crawls us
through, not a thing left in our self display
unhumiliated, do we find the sweet seed
of new routes; but we are natural, nature, not
we, gave rise to us: we are not, though, though
natural, divorced from higher, finer configurations:
tissues and holograms of energy circulate in
us and seek and find representations of themselves
outside us, so that we can participate on
celebrations high and know reaches of feeling
and sight and thought that penetrate (really
penetrate) far, far beyond these our wet cells,
right on up our past stories, the planets, moons,
and other bodies locally to the other end of
the pole where matter’s form diffuses and
energy loses all means to express itself except
as spirit, there, oh yes, in the abiding where
mind but nothing else abides, the eternal (…)
At several points in the poem, Ammons seems to guide us to the eternal here and now. His poetic ecology resonates with other cultural traditions. Let’s not forget that Shiva’s dance is one of creative destruction. In Hindu cosmology, the world is continually created and renewed through a dialectical play of creation and destruction, cohesion and disintegration. The tension between opposing forces gives rise to movement, and from that movement, Shakti, the dynamic energy, emerges. Shakti is the female principle, the substance that permeates everything that exists. The manifestation of its power is called Prakriti, or Nature: inherently diverse, dynamic and interconnected. Without her, Shiva, the symbol of creative and destructive force, the masculine principle, is as powerless as a corpse. That’s why tantric imagery depicts Shiva in loving union with his consort, Shakti: a representation of the relationship between pure consciousness and its power of manifestation.
Unlike many other spiritual traditions rooted in asceticism, Kashmir Shaivism (also known as Trika Shaivism) does not seek to transcend the body. On the contrary, the key to accessing a divinity that is both immanent and transcendent lies in intensifying bodily experience. One of the fundamental Tantric texts, the Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra4 presents a catalogue of techniques and micro-practices to establish a new bodily relationship with space. In the Tantric tradition, the full spectrum of thoughts, sensations and emotions is understood as a manifestation of the infinite and transparent play of consciousness. Nothing is superfluous, nothing is impure. Even the most banal, tedious or fleeting moments of daily life, like doing household chores or waiting in line at the grocery store, can be experienced in an entirely different way. Rooted on the plane of ultimate reality, each stanza of the Vijñāna-bhairava offers a practical invitation to dissolve the distance between perceiver and perceived. Every moment becomes an opportunity to train receptivity and invite the joy of heightened awareness in our everyday lives.
Spring begins today. It’s hard to believe this deep cerulean sky actually exists. It’s been one of those long, cold winters we have grown used to. But today, finally, the sun shines bright. Leaning out of my window, I watch the first wisteria buds unfurl in the inner courtyard. On my own windowsill, a tangle of weeds has sprung in the neglected flowerpots. I’m always surprised by the tenacious, unrestrained way they germinate, as if in an open prairie. Even in a metropolis like Paris, countless invisible seeds travel on the wind. I can’t help but find it meaningful that, here in the cradle of Cartesian reasoning and Enlightenment thought, new generations are turning toward Tantric traditions and seeking wisdom in other ancestral systems of knowledge. Cycles close. The sacred seeds of the past are germinating over the garbage heap.
As the Buddhist eco-philosopher Joanna Macy tells us, the ancient prophecy of the Kālacakra Tantra5 foretells the coming of the Kingdom of Shambhala at a time when the Earth lies in the hands of barbarous powers and the fate of every living being hangs by a thread. But Shambhala is not a geopolitical entity; it resides in the hearts and minds of all its warriors. Armed with insight and compassion, its radiant power imbues them with the physical and moral courage to dismantle the errors and ignorance of the human mind.
You don’t need to read poetry, or believe in myths and prophecies, to sense that humanity is undergoing a relentless metamorphosis. As arctic poles melt and borders fail to contain suffering, the abyss thrusts us into the primordial wellspring of existence, where Ananta lies in wait. The great cosmic serpent stirs from its millennial sleep. Invisible and stealthy, moving at a pace and scale beyond human comprehension, Ananta winds its way through time. Through its infinite skin, the terrifying beauty of the sacred is revealed.
I close my eyes. I focus on the warm caress of the sun on my face. Racism, climate anxiety, the threat of war—everything that weighs on me—suspends for a moment. I hear the buzz of a bumblebee approaching, drawn to the incandescent pink of the geraniums. Moments later, it moves on, drifting towards other blossoms opening in nearby courtyards. The inner gardens of these old buildings are hidden from street view. Behind a low stone wall stands my elderly German neighbor’s wild cherry tree. Or at least, I think it’s a cherry tree. Maybe it’s another species that also bears red fruit. I can’t be sure from this distance. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to name it. I can feel its burning patience in every nerve of my body.
¹The considerations on the destruction of the nests have been extracted from the book Inteligencia Planetaria. El despertar a la Inteligencia Vincular (Planetary Intelligence. The Awakening to the Bonded Intelligence). Carutti, Eugenio. Editorial Kier, 2020.
²The Intelligence of Flowers. 2008. Maeterlinck, Maurice. Albany: State University of New York. Translated and introduced by Philip Mosley.
³Garbage: A Poem. (1993) Ammons, R A. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
4Vijnana bhairava tantra. Le tantra de la connaissance suprême. Odier, Daniel. Albin Michel édition, 1998-2004.
5Synthesis of the prophecy according to Joanna Macy, extracted from the book World as Lover, World as Self. Parallax Press. Berkeley, California, 2007.
Translated from the French by Annuska Angulo Rivero
Alba E. Nivas is a writer and yoga teacher established in Paris. After working for several years as an international consultant specialized in environmental law, she quit her career as a lawyer in 2007 to devote herself to writing and environmental activism as a journalist. She has published two books: Horas inútiles junto al Sena (2024), a collection of short essays and poems, and the novel Desorientación (2010). She is a regular contributor to the magazine CTXT and disseminates Tantric teachings in workshops and retreats.
Annuska Angulo Rivero (Bilbao, 1971) is a translator, writer, and knitter. After studying and living in New York City from 1994 to 2000, she moved to Mexico City with her family. She graduated with honors in English Literature from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and holds a master’s degree in Translation Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of several children’s and young readers’ books, and co-author of El mensaje está en el tejido, a collection of essays on knitting. As a literary translator, she has published the poem “first writing since (poem on crisis of terror)” by Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad, and the essay “Trash Talk: On Translating Garbage” by Lina Mounzer. She has lived in London since 2018.
*****
Read more from the Asymptote blog: