43

Less joyful than it usually is.

 

The Goodness of the World, And the Sweetness

        

    There is no sorrow but loss. I lose nothing. I am no longer broke down by sorrow. I am afraid of goodbye, because goodbye is losing. And nothing comes back, anymore. I have perfected the art of loosing things. The cathedral in Prague. I no longer miss it. My mother. She is dead and I will not get her back. The night they burned my Bible and the ashes fell like snow. It burned for nine minutes and was done. I am learning to want this state called nothing. Loss is sorrow. I am learning this like a liturgy. There is nothing that I want. Nothing.

 

    I need you to believe that lack nothing. Do you hear? My world is made of this gravel path. The weeping mud, the thoughtless stones. Even though these solely are my world alone, I don't need them. There loss is nothing. If tomorrow I step shivering into the fog and this path has been replaced by the mouldering canals in Amsterdam or waist deep mud and shit, I won't mind. I have stopped minding.

 

    Please. Don't ask me to desire again. I used to understand yearning. Yearning is what one feels in the mountains in Austria, praying for the fire called Holy Ghost to descend on one. Yearning is what one feels for the warmth of your girls shoulder when she is out of the city on a university outing and one knows she'll be back on Sunday. There is none of that.

Desire is not the root of all evil. I have come to know at least that.

 

    When people are gone. I am learning not to mind. I used to believe that we were all essential cogs in some whirring productive machine called the world and also life. I had thought we together turned out loaves of crusty bread, babies, the curl of maple on the cradle my grandfather carved for me, potato dumplings, the ability to play chess. Now. I know this machine can run itself without any of us. I am not sure what it makes. We are no loss. The other day, I saw a man break another mans's ribcage by stepping casually on it, as easily as one climbs the stairs to go to church.

 

    Notice also means almost lost, or about to be. To notice is to take inventory of what exists without preparing oneself to lose it all. What exists in the world is nothing. A gravel path. Not even that. Once a thing exists, it leaves. Please don't ask me about the others. I want for nothing.