Sunday, May 10, 2015

"To see ourselves as others see us."

In the deep overcast of a quiet night, I sometimes see the past events of the day shudder past me, almost as real to vision as if the things were happening again, the people’s voices wandering up and down again, the undefined semblance of their bodies walking up and down the front of the room, or perched on chairs in the back, in the same way they had done so that morning, now in less certainty, of course. And I don’t dwell much on the idea that they see me in the same, repeated reality. I have not gone so far as to assume their moments of idleness run on the same tracks; in fact, to perhaps my own loss, I take the opposite for granted. It must be that only a few of us live this double life of watching, apart from simply being, and should this assumption someday be shown wrong, we would suffer – it is an isolated temperament, and we thrive on isolation.

MH // spring 2013