What the Light Touches

by Xavier Bosch

“We hardly speak about it because we think about it a lot.”

“We’re like a tree leaf. Every single one of us, a leaf. Beautiful, fragile, proud . . . imperfect too.” “Colorful.” “Yes, colorful. Or shriveled. Delicate . . . The tree is humanity. We each are one of the leaves. And we dance in the wind and need the other trees to live, and we hold on for the calm. Édith was one leaf, your father another. And Damien. And you. And I, holding on here. The game of life is designed so they fall one by one.”

Was he happy? He simply was. Or acted like it. He moved forward without taking stock. These types of questions that came on their own only confused a person, in any case, when life was on the decline. Up to that moment, he was, he did, he located, he photographed, he classified . . . he lived. Each verb was a movement, an action. Stopping or thinking or settling the score were romantic ideas for another phase of life he couldn’t even imagine. The time for taking inventory had yet to come for him, of missing people and places, of understanding himself, of melancholically comparing decades, of assessing the fears of old age, of resigning himself to a little arthrosis, of getting excited over something small and contemplating nature like it was infinite. But it wasn’t yet time for the cracks to appear. He’d get to the age where he’d understand poets and buy comfortable shoes. As long as there was more future than past, he took being happy for granted. Shortly and simply: “I don’t have any reason not to be.”

“I search for the fall in winter, the water in the desert, the music in the silence.”

Roger, when asked what he photographed.

It got dark, and we didn’t need anything else. Mamie’s voice, company before an impossible blue, salt on our skin, the absence of fear. If you asked me now what kind of ice cream it was, I couldn’t remember. But I could tell you any flavor, and they’d all be true. That’s the thing about half-remembered memories—we can put them together the way we want. And exaggerate them. Literature is full of stories like that.

And she said that, in the end, stairs don’t go up or down on their own; everything depends on us.

Once it had been guessed, everyone came together to hum it at half volume. The murmured tune brought them so much peace. In the hall, they were an orchestra. Underground, they were a heart.

Orchestra members, playing a game to pass the time in the basement bomb shelter.

The secret to living longer and better is,” she declared with the voice of an afternoon program for children, “eat half, walk double, laugh triple, and love without measure.

“Meditation is looking for the best solutions from within. Prayer is trying to find magical formulas from outside.”