The White Book

by Han Kang

Each moment is a leap forward from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time’s keen edges are constantly renewed. We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our life lived thus far and take that perilous step out into the empty air. Not because we can claim any particular courage, but because there is no other way.

Standing at this border where land and water meet, watching the seemingly endless recurrence of the waves (though this eternity is in fact illusion: the earth will one day vanish, everything will one day vanish), the fact that our lives are no more than brief instants is felt with unequivocal clarity.

This vanishing fragility, this oppressive weight of beauty.

There are certain memories that remain inviolate to the ravages of time. And to those of suffering. It is not true that everything is colored by time and suffering. It is not true that they bring everything to ruin.

And she frequently forgot, That her body (all our bodies) is a house of sand. That it had shattered and is shattering still. Slipping stubbornly through fingers.

As though there has never been a time when the only comfort lay in the impossibility of forever.

If she believes that she has never been shattered, she can believe that she will be shattered no more.

This life needed only one of us to live it. If you had lived beyond those first few hours, I would not be living now. My life means yours is impossible. Only in the gap between darkness and light, only in that blue-tinged breach, do we manage to make out each other’s faces.

Within that white, all of those white things, I will breathe in the final breath you released.