An Empty Gesture

He finds that with propriety he cannot write about his own life.  He acts against people, but he would not make those people conscious witnesses of his actions.  He seals himself away from others, both by the barriers he places in their way and by the silence he erects to guard those barriers.  It is the assault of an animal -- the very thought is contained in the action, and the thought is nothing besides, or at least has no other expression than, that action.

To the departed: it was a matter of drifting, it was a matter of harm.  The harm became a wound, the wound scarred, the scar is a rift.  I think of it like a gap that fills up with all the hostilities of the world.  It is something radical and diseased, and I want no part of it.  I also would like to be someone else.  There is now what is for me an insurmountable investment of pain required to cross it, so I would rather call it a loss.  But I feel the pain enough to remark it.  I want to say something without saying anything.  So I whisper a word when your -- when his -- back is turned.  It will never be known, but it will exist.  Children cross their fingers when they make a promise they know they don't intend to keep.  The gesture must be there, witness must be borne to God or to the conscience, but an unseen sign is hardly a sign at all.  This gesture has been emptied of meaning but retains the form of meaning.  So that is what I do as I depart, only for my own conscience.