The Lake

There’s no need to forgive every mistake, to learn to like the bad things, we tell ourselves, and so we forgive just enough, in an easy sort of way.

She gave it everything she had, squeezing every last drop of strength in her body into following the tiny thread that led her to me.

Not to run away from everything that had happened in a day, but to turn it all into another form of energy, make it part of myself.

Be sure to keep your tummy warm, try to relax, both your heart and your body, try not to get flustered. Live like a flower. You have that right. It’s something you can achieve, for sure, in your lifetime. And that’s enough.

Here we were, two ridiculously fragile people, sliding along on a very thin layer of ice all the time, each of us ready to slip and take the other down at any moment, the most unsteady of couples—and yet I believed what I had said. It would be all right.

Going along like that, I felt like we were high above the clouds, shining.

I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.

It was easy for me to listen, since I’d never been broken like him. That’s how people are, pretty much, wherever in the world you might go. There’s no need to forgive every mistake, to learn to like the bad things, we tell ourselves, and so we forgive just enough, in an easy sort of way.

But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there. And that something is always greater than these emotions of mine.”

Of course, it’s true that sometimes the pink at sunrise somehow seems brighter than the pink at sunset, and that when you’re feeling down the landscape seems darker, too—you see things through the filter of your own sensibility. But the things themselves, out there, they don’t change. They existed, and that’s all there is to it.

So there’s actually a reason for someone like me to exist in this world. Even before I start thinking about stuff like that, whether there is or isn’t a reason, in some place that exists prior to such thoughts, an enormous wheel is spinning, and I’m caught up inescapably in its motion.

It’s amazing to realize how ignorant I was. And how innocent.

Things keep coming around and around in this world, it’s all crammed violently together, two parts of the same skin. But I didn’t realize that.

Everything in my life revolves around people playing at being something.

But that’s only because we have to be that way in order to get on with our lives. Just because people are playing doesn’t mean their hearts aren’t in it.

But we’re living our lives, just like everyone. We live in this place. Our lives may be warped, but we live them all the same. One day to the next.

Love isn’t only a matter of fussing over each other, hugging, wanting to be together. Some things communicate, inevitably, precisely because you keep them in check. The heartfelt feelings that find their way to you in the form of money and imported gourmet ham.

You don’t necessarily have to want to become an adult; it happens as a matter of course, as you go, making choices. The important thing, I think, is to choose for yourself.

At this very moment, I was truly beginning to fall in love. It weighed on me and it was sometimes a pain in the ass, but the payoff could be big, too. So big it felt like gazing up into the sky. Or like looking out an airplane window at the ocean, with clouds shining above it.

It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.

Like the feeling you get when you realize that, in the grand scheme of things, your time here on this earth really isn’t all that long after all.

See, people like us are never at the center of things. We’re always on the margins, and I generally figure it’s best not to stand out too much. Most of the time we see things in exactly the opposite light as the majority does, and people don’t look kindly on you if you stand out. When push comes to shove, though, you’ve got to have something you won’t cave in on. Otherwise, you end up like a recluse or something, cut off from the world.

That’s how it goes. Things look different depending on your perspective.

As I see it, fighting to bridge those gaps isn’t what really matters. The most important thing is to know them inside and out, as differences, and to understand why certain people are the way they are.

I was the one hugging him, and yet I felt as if we were clinging to each other, he and I, at the edge of a cliff.

It’s because this is all he has, in this circumscribed world. Looking out at the lake, drinking good tea. That’s his only luxury.

And what an enormous luxury that is. He’s created a world for himself that no one else can interfere with, I thought. A world free from all external impositions.