You were small then. Your hand was small. You reached toward it. And at once the thorn pricked. A small, sharp pain. A drop of blood on your finger. You withdrew your hand. That recoil lives somewhere in your hand still. That small bite, the first drop of blood. Perhaps your first lesson about the world.
Whatever you reach toward can hurt you. Whatever your hand touches may bloom as a thorn.
You learned that day. In the thicket. In the garden. In your mother's time. And from then on, it seemed, you slowly began to pull your hand back from the world—that thorny thing.
There is another memory. A tree. From childhood. You climbed it. You climbed and climbed until you reached the very top. Then you looked down and saw the earth far below. Your head spun. Your hand gripped the branch hard. Below, your father's voice—or someone's. Saying, come down.
You didn't come down. You didn't want to.
You stayed up there. At the top of the branch, above everyone else, in the air. Above the earth, above the garden, above the thicket, above the thorns. Alone. For how long? Perhaps an hour. And the one who was calling—he too left eventually. Then you were even more alone.
Because climbing is easier than it seems, but descending never is. Never easy. While climbing, you only feel how high you've gone. There is joy in that. But when you descend, you feel how far the earth is. And then the true shape of climbing reveals itself. Descending is climbing's truth, which climbing itself conceals. Because climbing often wants to escape the earth; descending brings you back to it.
As you descended, your knees scraped raw, your palms were scratched. The bark of the tree exacted its toll from the body that moved down through it, as the earth exacts its toll from every body that passes through it. Those scratches healed slowly; the skin smoothed again. But the memory didn't heal. Never will. The memory of the tree, of the height, of the dizzy fear looking down, of the one who said, "Come down," and then left. All of it remained, in that deep place where the thorns are, where your mother is. All first things still smolder in the dark, forever.
Your father. The one who said, "Come down," who then left. Not once, but again and again. Leaving seemed to be his nature. He went more than he came. His going at first wasn't noticed. He would fade away slowly. Then one day you'd look and he was gone. You couldn't quite say when he left.
Only the back stays with you. That back, growing small as it receded into the distance. Turning his back came easily to him—easier than showing his face. Now his face is blurred; it has dissolved into the mist, merged with other faces. The faces of daughters, all the faces lost to time. But the back remained. That broad back. Perhaps covered in a dark coat. Moving away.
Through which way? Along some path. The garden path, perhaps, or a street, or the corridor of that house, the one before this room. You stand small behind, and the back moves farther. Not because he is shrinking, but because the distance between you and him is growing. He plants his steps and makes distance, and never once does he turn to look back.
That not turning was a lesson. The second lesson, after the thorn. The thorn taught you that whatever you reach toward will hurt you. Your father's back taught you that whatever you reach toward can leave.
You stood there. On the path, alone. The back grew smaller and smaller until it finally dissolved at the end of the path. Into some doorway perhaps, or some street, or simply into darkness. You didn't call out to him.
# A Child, Yet I Did Not Call
Even as a child, I did not call. There was perhaps a voice in my throat, yet it would not come. As if I had always known that turning around would not bring him back. Because some backs are not made for turning toward.
That back, in truth, was not merely one side of a body. It was a language. A complete language, with its own grammar, but without words. Speech without a mouth, utterance without a voice. That back spoke: I am leaving. I will not look back. And it said: there is no need to turn and look at what I am leaving behind. It also said: what I am abandoning is not as urgent as my departure.
In the very posture of his going—shoulders firm, head unbowed, steps unhesitant—lay his speech. Perhaps no face was ever so eloquent as a back departing into distance. Without uttering a word, it said everything. By merely showing the act of leaving. With each step moving further from you.
This too was a gift, if gifts can be called such. The only visible education your father ever gave. The part of himself he showed you most was his leaving. That back seemed to say: I am going, not returning, not turning; you remain behind, I go far away; and you will stand, and merely watch.
Your father’s back was perhaps the first thing you ever saw pass before your eyes. Before the departures you chose yourself. Before the leaving you desired. Before a loved one could vanish. Before losing friends. Before all of that.
He went down that path. Without turning.
And you stood, watching, learning. Not knowing what education he was giving. And not knowing that you were learning. But later you would understand: perhaps your entire life would be spent in this very act. Something or someone moving away, and you standing to witness it.
A back receding. You watching. This will be your work.
Stairs. Before these thirteen stairs, there was another. The stairs of a working day. From which you were removed. To say “removed” is not quite exact, for it conjures images of force, commotion, hands gripping firmly, resistance. There was none of that here. There was a kind of silent removal. You were quietly left outside. Whoever removes does not usually weep. The tears come from within you, the one removed. And such tears are sometimes worse than screams.
The door closed behind you; then a small, cold metallic sound—it still rings in your ears. You did not close it. The lock fell. You did not lock it. But that tiny metallic utterance lingers still within your ear. As though an entire life was sealed shut in the space of a single metallic sound.
You stood at the top of the stairs. From where? From an office, say. Or from some building. Or, to speak more deeply, from the life in which you had dwelt so long. You were removed almost the way one extinguishes a light when night falls. Or the way one puts a cat out of doors. Silently, into the cold, the door closing after.
And you are standing there. Below lies the street. Now it is yours. It does not matter whether you wish it or not.
Your hat was still on your head. What was on your head when you entered remained when you left. As if, after taking everything else, they allowed you to keep only that. Wearing the hat, you descended the stairs. Slowly, one by one. Your body counting. The body knows how to count all things. Stairs, days, heartbeats, decline.
Then you came down onto the street.
And from there began another journey, one that finally came to rest in this room, in this chair, at this window, before this greyness.
Being cast out is always a kind of beginning. Like birth. Each rejection, too, is a new start. The start of something you did not want, did not choose, yet were made to enact. The way most of life’s great events happen through you, beyond your will, beyond your readiness.
By the common order of things.
Those through whom things are made to happen rarely desire them. But neither can they resist.
And into all this came the lesson of a father’s back, intertwining with the cactus’s first teaching. The cactus had taught: reach out your hand and it will wound. Your father’s back had taught: call out and it will not turn. Together they completed the world’s curriculum. Brief, merciless, infallible. Your first divided knowledge of the world: advance and it will pain you; call and it will never look back.
You had learned these things before words. Before they were even named. Your body learned them before your mind could grasp. The hand that was withdrawn, the throat that never cried out—they understood already. This was the body’s first compact with the world: the world gives thorns, the body retreats.
And you. A child standing in the path. Watching a back that never once turned.
Even then, unknowingly, you were rehearsing for the future. For this room. For this chair. For this stillness. Many years later, after countless failed reaches, after many calls that became silence, you would come to stand in this place. Where hands no longer reach, where the throat no longer calls. Because you had learned, slowly, imperceptibly: the world is not for reaching toward, nor for calling out to. The world simply moves away. You simply watch.
By the common order of things.
Those who learn from the cactus, from the father’s back, know at last: the world can be seen but not held; it can be called to but never turned back. So from the path, from the chair, from the room, they only stand gazing. The world passes on, following its own course toward darkness, never turning once.
11.
Someone exists beyond the wall. A neighbor.
You hear their footsteps. The sound of water. Sometimes the cadence of a voice. But the words don’t reach you; language doesn’t cross over. Only vibrations arrive. Distant, broken, unclear.
Place your hand against the wall and you know: someone is there on the other side. Alone, perhaps, like you. It’s even possible that at this very moment they too have their hand against the wall, wondering who is on this side. Two people, on opposite sides of one wall, each separate, each uncertain, each alone. It would sound like a joke, if only you could laugh.
Perhaps you are both doing the same thing, neither knowing of the other.
This city is divided by countless such rooms, houses, walls, floors, ceilings. Like honeycomb cells. Each distinct. Each identical. In each cell a life exists. Or the remainder of a life, or its shadow, or merely habit. Where everything continues mechanically, because at some point mechanical habit comes to stand in the place where life once was.
You don’t know them. They don’t know you.