I don’t believe in knowing a person. And, yet, I find myself wanting to know her, as a portal into the mystery of the human experience. She embodies all of the things that fascinate me: Contradiction, an inability to be categorized, seething pain, brilliant intellect, an intolerance to frivolity or anything trite.
In many ways, she is what I long to be. In many ways, she is everything I fear of being.
People cannot be analyzed, explained, and understood. The beauty in that makes my throat tighten.
We are to be observed and experienced, like any work of art. At first, we ask questions of the artwork as our senses take it in. Then we feel our breathing change, maybe we take a deep breath or we realize we’re holding it or it comes in staccatos. Our bodies are always the first to know. We are affected. Together we create a new entity, this space between the art, artist, and observer. This space becomes even more complex when your sinew and tissue and bone formed from the same place.
Soon, I will be interacting only with a memory. Flashes of exchanges that are already skewed by the person I am now being different from the person who experienced those moments.
And, yet, she is the place my soul longs to explore. Perhaps I am preparing for her flight, looking for a way to make sense of words that have wounded, a life of regrets and misses, a way to create the closeness I always wanted. Doing this for us both: Two writers, both silenced by life, who finally found their voices and pulled each other home.