Revised April 15 2008
I see
her and can observe her a short while almost every day. But since we
somehow managed to make each other uncomfortable we haven’t had a single
conversation, we only exchange occasional uncomfortable hellos.
So
now, because she can’t tell me in words, I try to understand what she is
feeling by discreetly watching her and by trying to
empathize.
And
maybe I get it all wrong - I imagine she might be thinking
this or that, when quite possibly she isn’t thinking anything of the
sort.
But
something I know I’m not wrong about – she is so
sensitive.
Well
maybe all of us are sensitive - but not that much, not like that.
When she
is joyful I can only watch in awe - how can just one person
shine so much light in a smile? How can someone laugh like
that?
Yet in the very same day she can be so terribly sad. I saw her on
the verge of tears one day, and the expression of her face and eyes I am
unable to find words to describe, though I have thought hard and tried
several times.
She picks up the feelings of others around her
like some kind of scientific instrument. If I pass near her but out of
view, she knows I am there without looking. When I do, if I am at ease
she remains at ease; if I am ill at ease it passes into her body like
energy, as if at the speed of light; glance at her and there is no
doubt. And yet she wouldn't even know I was there if her perception
were limited to her five physical senses.
The funny thing about it is that in trying to tune my mind to
hers, in order to understand her feelings, I seem to be catching her
condition, if only in a milder form. For weeks I have been listening to
her soul, and it seems I am becoming too sensitive for comfort.
Ordinary daily and trifling observations and impressions are no
longer so ordinary, they are beginning to affect me more. Not all of
them of course, but a few of them are becoming a little too poignant.
When I was a little boy, playing outdoors, I was very sensitive
to sunshine and clouds. When the sun went behind a cloud and I was no
longer bathed in its light and warmth, it was as if my heart went behind
a cloud in the very same instant, and I was filled with a palpable
sadness. As soon as the sun peaked backed out on the other side of the
cloud, warmth and joy streamed into and throughout my body; in those
moments, sunshine and joy were one and the same and indistinguishable.
And now, whether for a moment or a day or for longer, I am
becoming sensitive again. Sometimes it’s really nice and sometimes it’s
difficult; at moments a person can feel seriously sad.
It’s as if she and I were radios and had been tuned to different
frequencies. Maybe because we weren’t tuned together, that’s what caused
the discomfort and the distance. Or maybe that wasn't the reason. But
like it or not, and however accidentally, in trying to sound her
feelings I seem to have fallen upon a frequency close to her own, or a
harmonic of her frequency. And impressions and feelings are rushing in
that I don’t usually have to deal with. As they did when I was a child,
and when I was a very young man.
If she’d had a cold or a flu, and I were sitting beside her, I
might have caught her cold. Instead I seem to have caught her
sensitivity. Like a cold, it might get better in a few days. But when
one catches a case of sensitivity, it is hard to know whether or not
getting rid of it will be a good thing.
I don’t think she is going to get over her sensitivity very soon.
And I pray that she doesn’t. Though I also wish she wouldn't have those
sadnesses of hers any more.