On a shore, stones lie scattered in the sand. I pick one up, look at it in my hand. The sand runs on and on through my fingers. A whole life slips through my fingers. I move them gently as if trying to move a string that isn’t there. A whole life slips from my hand. The stone lies heavy in it, but the sand does not stop falling. It falls and falls and scatters and spreads upon the beach. A life disappears before it has even been—it slips from my hands, from my grasp, from all I can do. It flees into a distant reality that we only guess at while alive, into which we cannot follow, and before which we stand waiting, as if before a great closed gate.
The gate hides a reality. Behind the gate blows a wide, black cloth decorated with stars barely visible. On the frame of the gate is written “Time.” The gate stands at the edge of time, placed on the boundary as a guard, a protector. Sand flows through the gate, but the gate remains closed. A life is released, a life not yet there, not allowed to be, a life for which a gate opened and then closed again. Passing through a hand, a life becomes sand, running endlessly through my fingers on a beach where I walk alone, transported to an in-between world; where a gesture is given to a life; where reference is made to the stars, the ancient comforters.
Sand runs through my fingers. A life that has not been, a breath, the sensation of the sun’s rays on my skin—a whole life passes me by through the sand that trickles endlessly from my hand to the ground, scattering and spreading. It would have liked to live. Sand touched by a higher power carrying it with care, carrying it back from my hand into its bosom. This is the innocence of all life that was not to be. Willing—life wills to be. It is the unconditional love that is; a life that wills to be, that has come to us and faded before it began.
It is sand of eternity under a black canopy that disappears without reproach between my fingers, showing what it would have been, had it been; not terrible, not disturbing, without shame, but with a clarity and decisiveness, only present in the certain course of events.
I, myself, fell from my hand, through my fingers, became sand, and disappeared into the air, into the wind. I was here and touched time with my fingertips, all but seized upon it, almost lowered myself down on the rope of time, and I would have landed upon the Earth. But I stayed on a shore in-between worlds and ran out from a hand, far away. Scattered and collected, I ran back home—without fear, without bitterness, without reproach, knowing, knowing, knowing.
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Photo Jim Gade
