Italy. I only feel the want of those who can feel, and understand me. Whether from proximity and the continuity of domestic intercourse, Mary does not.
I felt I’d glimpsed something hideous. Those two whose hands moved side by side finishing each other’s letters, helping with each other’s books, who slept entwined in the night—even between them a loneliness, a wrongness. (I thought of her sad skin, the redness spreading.)
His hand continued:
Concealing and containing And the atoms of chaos And the waves of-its chaos are
Making captivity a barren coffin
I sold my watch, chain, & etc which brought 2 napoleons 5 francs
I was not before so clearly aware how much the colouring of our own feelings throws upon the delineations of other minds
We arrived at Paris. Mary showed me the papers in her box, promised I could read and study them. I intend to claim this promise.
His hand returned a few more times through the next weeks. Then abruptly, not at all.
Meanwhile I kept reading. Pictured them reading also to each other. Their words in air made clear they often did this:
Teusday 21st
(she was misspelling Tuesday again)
Shelley reads Livy and then reads Gibbon with me till dinner; Monday 8th— buy Shelley a pencil case—talk with him for hours—read Ovid together— S. finishes the 17th canto of Orlando Furioso; Wednesday 23rd—Mary not well. Visited Minerva Library. Brought home Adolphus’s Lives to reads with her in the evening.
My books as close and real to me as flesh. Often they seemed almost to breathe:
“Noble deer.
But man lives in huts, wrapped in the garments of his shame …”
∼ ∼ ∼
“What does it mean to speak of Hölderlin’s madness? The official record tells us he loses his mind toward the end of 1806. Released from a clinic after a year’s unsuccessful treatment, he will spend his remaining days in a small tower overlooking the river Neckar, passing his time playing the flute, reading, going for long walks, and every now and then, under the mysterious heteronym of Scardanelli, composing a few small, rhymed poems.”
∼ ∼ ∼
“The Cha no yu, or tea-making ceremony, is an elaborate ritual invented, so it is said, in the sixteenth century by the great Hideyoshi, to turn the thoughts of his men away from war. Perpetual peace was to be kept by means of pursuing artistic grace. Although this policy failed, it gave rise to a flowering of the ceramic arts.”
∼ ∼ ∼
“Nothing sets us upon a change of state, or upon any new action, but some uneasiness. Uneasiness is the great motive that works on the mind.”
Now there are no hands to wait for. I look out at the stone face across the way, the PARK sign, read MTA posters as I ride:
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. THERE ARE l6 MILLION EYES IN THE CITY. WE’RE COUNTING ON ALL OF THEM. BE SUSPICIOUS OF ANYTHING. PLEASE TAKE YOUR THINGS. OR WE WILL.
Call the anti-terrorism hotline: 888-NYC-SAFE · Be alert to unattended packages or luggage · Be wary of suspicious behavior · Take notice of people in inappropriate or bulky clothing especially in warm weather · Keep an eye out for exposed wiring or other irregularities · Report anyone tampering with surveillance cameras or entering unauthorized areas · Be wary of someone nervously checking belongings or clothing · And remember, if you see something, say something.
REMEMBER. YOU ARE THE EYES AND EARS OF THE SYSTEM.
Didn’t your world fill with suspicion because it had me in it? From the moment I opened my eyes, you couldn’t trust who you were, what you had made or done, what I was or might become. Yet mostly you said nothing, until maybe those last hours of your dying. In that way weren’t we alike?—we kept our secrets, fed the isolate silence of our eyes.
William, Do you remember when Dr. Singleton told us some day they’ll invent a cream that’s a barrier between skin and toxic chemicals—You just rub it in, it leaves an invisible glove on your hand—But what if the workers’ materials, the air, weren’t toxic?—Even the barriers in our cells, will they try to make them more vigilant, less supple?—When the water went into my lungs I thought maybe I could be the water, but they fished me out, they—And hands are barriers, and eyes. Sometimes when my pen moved across the page there was no barrier between my thoughts and the words—Between the things I felt and the