The Space Between - Zine, 2018
On a muggy August morning my brother and I were sandwiched into the 5 train, downtown-bound. Stops came and went and, despite interminable construction, our journey lurched forward. And now,
sitting at my desk, working away at an unevenly cut grapefruit, I think back on our conversation, the other patrons, the setting, our faces, looks being cast our way. Desperately, I try to recreate a thought-strand that came over me that morning, of which I was unable to think clearly over the din of the train, in the presence of that work-bound peloton. I suppose I had grown used to the type of thinking typical to a summer spent variously in the foothills of Vermont and at our family’s small house in the islands of Lake Champlain. Though the noise shook me into a delirium of awareness, my mind became more cognizant of the multiplicity of strands that had always been there, which were all at once taught.
I felt more susceptible, more malleable, more penetrable than, I suspect, many of my co-habitants, Jeb included, as if this damning vision, this crushing immobility, had opened a new understanding of the innate oneness of everyone in the train. Although at the time this was quite frustrating, I now realize I may have stood at a privileged place, albeit hazardous, to come to some interesting conclusions. I think I was thinking about love and sacrifice; spurred by the ostensible dynamics of New York’s public transportation—each person in their seat, engrossed in whatever media best distracts them from the ostensible despondence out of which they try to carve a sliver of light which might cover their cowering existences.
Earlier, I had been reading Simone Weil’s work on malheur mère and I was struck by that blind mechanism which had done so much for some and so little for others, yet left them all equal access to a subjective experience of human happiness, if only they were to take hold of it. What follows is your image, your first-person account, which you can strap to the main narrative: a seriously tender boy unwittingly receives an inhale of factory smoke, harsh on his pink lungs, and after a few moments of real anguish, he exhales. Please do not mistake me for the flower, and please do not cry disanalogy, but, re-tether your mind to the fact of the matter.
And as I looked at a small old man clutching a fistful of flowers, I began to dream. Tumbling down through the mysterious channels of my inattentiveness I came suddenly upon the same old man, and now, with a resigned and regal passion, he spoke.
“And here is an ode to flowers laid on a grave, doomed to wilt in perfect synchrony with the corpse rotting six feet below. Who are you? You brave and beautiful thing. I love you. Where have you come from? From where have you amassed the bravery to be beautiful in this place, full of the dead, or to commit your life to dying alongside the dead, in a hushed solidarity? Oh, yes, I love you endlessly, and after ends meet ends my love for you will sift abstractly through the space you once inhabited. For you are love for its own sake.”
“You are a love which exists to be sold to demonstrate the hope that one’s love might do that very thing—sift abstractly to the beloved, I mean. You are grown by an entity who prostitutes your love thus, who cares not for you, but takes advantage of the love which you selflessly give to the world, expecting nothing in return. Fostered in that indignation, that greed, that merchant’s driving force, which whispers gently in his ear, live, you became love purest. You became love that passes through the distance we ourselves cannot not traverse. Sentimentality is only a love which is felt passing by—caught, as it searches for its beloved. And you feel it at some stage in its perilous journey, unshelled, uncloaked, vulnerable.”
The man now began to weep softly into his handkerchief. He composed himself and looked up at me with renewed sureness, and carried on in a louder tone.
“And sometimes, when love is not easy to find—because maybe it was poorly directed from its onset—it will look and look, and its residual effervescence, following always in its wake, will grace the hearts of all those it encounters along its way. Maybe when the love you feel most strongly strikes with its strength, that love is meant for you, and has not gone a long distance. And maybe when love is harder to discern from hate, from jealousy, from lust, it has travelled a long way, and has been pared down from all those whom it graced on its long journey.”
“But, still, it finds its way to you, a glimmer of something it once was, what it was intended to be. When you feel this love, the love of the flower you see on a grave, who is looking for its beloved and not for you, you can take it as a smaller love, or you can let it permeate your being, and flow endlessly through you, to feed a love within you, that can grow immeasurably. But, ultimately, be grateful to those flowers laid down to represent this love, the passionate love who lives only to transmit or represent this love, who dies a martyr of the one true cause that brightens any human life.”
Coming back into the light of the present moment, I felt the damp air of the train give way to the hissing sound which trumpeted my exit from the tube. And time was perverted as I took the inaugural step over the crack between the train and the platform, as my foot dangled loosely over that indeterminate space, and I thought again of the old man, who had remained on the train. But fighting all premonition, I pushed forward into the crowd, remembering the sentiment that he had helped me find that morning, amidst the dirt and all the screens, thinking always.
On a muggy August morning my brother and I were sandwiched into the 5 train, downtown-bound. Stops came and went and, despite interminable construction, our journey lurched forward. And now,
sitting at my desk, working away at an unevenly cut grapefruit, I think back on our conversation, the other patrons, the setting, our faces, looks being cast our way. Desperately, I try to recreate a thought-strand that came over me that morning, of which I was unable to think clearly over the din of the train, in the presence of that work-bound peloton. I suppose I had grown used to the type of thinking typical to a summer spent variously in the foothills of Vermont and at our family’s small house in the islands of Lake Champlain. Though the noise shook me into a delirium of awareness, my mind became more cognizant of the multiplicity of strands that had always been there, which were all at once taught.
I felt more susceptible, more malleable, more penetrable than, I suspect, many of my co-habitants, Jeb included, as if this damning vision, this crushing immobility, had opened a new understanding of the innate oneness of everyone in the train. Although at the time this was quite frustrating, I now realize I may have stood at a privileged place, albeit hazardous, to come to some interesting conclusions. I think I was thinking about love and sacrifice; spurred by the ostensible dynamics of New York’s public transportation—each person in their seat, engrossed in whatever media best distracts them from the ostensible despondence out of which they try to carve a sliver of light which might cover their cowering existences.
Earlier, I had been reading Simone Weil’s work on malheur mère and I was struck by that blind mechanism which had done so much for some and so little for others, yet left them all equal access to a subjective experience of human happiness, if only they were to take hold of it. What follows is your image, your first-person account, which you can strap to the main narrative: a seriously tender boy unwittingly receives an inhale of factory smoke, harsh on his pink lungs, and after a few moments of real anguish, he exhales. Please do not mistake me for the flower, and please do not cry disanalogy, but, re-tether your mind to the fact of the matter.
And as I looked at a small old man clutching a fistful of flowers, I began to dream. Tumbling down through the mysterious channels of my inattentiveness I came suddenly upon the same old man, and now, with a resigned and regal passion, he spoke.
“And here is an ode to flowers laid on a grave, doomed to wilt in perfect synchrony with the corpse rotting six feet below. Who are you? You brave and beautiful thing. I love you. Where have you come from? From where have you amassed the bravery to be beautiful in this place, full of the dead, or to commit your life to dying alongside the dead, in a hushed solidarity? Oh, yes, I love you endlessly, and after ends meet ends my love for you will sift abstractly through the space you once inhabited. For you are love for its own sake.”
“You are a love which exists to be sold to demonstrate the hope that one’s love might do that very thing—sift abstractly to the beloved, I mean. You are grown by an entity who prostitutes your love thus, who cares not for you, but takes advantage of the love which you selflessly give to the world, expecting nothing in return. Fostered in that indignation, that greed, that merchant’s driving force, which whispers gently in his ear, live, you became love purest. You became love that passes through the distance we ourselves cannot not traverse. Sentimentality is only a love which is felt passing by—caught, as it searches for its beloved. And you feel it at some stage in its perilous journey, unshelled, uncloaked, vulnerable.”
The man now began to weep softly into his handkerchief. He composed himself and looked up at me with renewed sureness, and carried on in a louder tone.
“And sometimes, when love is not easy to find—because maybe it was poorly directed from its onset—it will look and look, and its residual effervescence, following always in its wake, will grace the hearts of all those it encounters along its way. Maybe when the love you feel most strongly strikes with its strength, that love is meant for you, and has not gone a long distance. And maybe when love is harder to discern from hate, from jealousy, from lust, it has travelled a long way, and has been pared down from all those whom it graced on its long journey.”
“But, still, it finds its way to you, a glimmer of something it once was, what it was intended to be. When you feel this love, the love of the flower you see on a grave, who is looking for its beloved and not for you, you can take it as a smaller love, or you can let it permeate your being, and flow endlessly through you, to feed a love within you, that can grow immeasurably. But, ultimately, be grateful to those flowers laid down to represent this love, the passionate love who lives only to transmit or represent this love, who dies a martyr of the one true cause that brightens any human life.”
Coming back into the light of the present moment, I felt the damp air of the train give way to the hissing sound which trumpeted my exit from the tube. And time was perverted as I took the inaugural step over the crack between the train and the platform, as my foot dangled loosely over that indeterminate space, and I thought again of the old man, who had remained on the train. But fighting all premonition, I pushed forward into the crowd, remembering the sentiment that he had helped me find that morning, amidst the dirt and all the screens, thinking always.