A childhood page tangles in her eyes. Clutching trees in Snow White’s nightmare run through the forest. The past tangles. We fear fragments of the past and fear liberation from the past.
We need our possessions. Unlike Pico, most of us cannot pack up the self and travel with it, yet, like a carry-on case.
Sometimes, we attach ourselves so strongly that we betray our fear of letting go. Then we leave convulsively, astonishing those who are left. Such violent contradictions.
Sometimes we don’t leave, perplexed. ‘If I have invested too much’ then translates into—‘if I have made the whole world one.’ That would devalue the world, diminish life.
There is world, and there is what one needs—love, family, possessions, satisfaction, oh we call them all by many names.
One might let go somewhat. Attachment/detachment. Abhaya. Freedom from fear of freedom. Along the way, the loss of a great beloved might strike us in the midst of the street. And because one couldn’t bear to know it, it is forgotten in a turn to all things human.