On Connection

by Kae Tempest

world. Others who see the beauty first and are driven to witness the carnage.

On a plinth in the centre of a glass display case, in between large photographic journals and leather-bound antiques, I saw Jung’s Red Book. It was about a foot high, lit from beneath, and open at the first pages. I read those pages and felt my breathing change; something in the language was calling to me. I had been feeling so out of sorts and close to the edge. I didn’t want to get up and do a reading in a bookstore and answer questions about my novel. I just wanted to sit in the park and talk to my friend until it was time to fly to the next place. But seeing that book and reading that page, I felt myself rediscovered. Speak then of sick delusion when the spirit of the depths can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself is the spirit of the depths. But also speak of sick delusion when the spirit of this time does not leave a man and forces him to see only the surface, to deny the spirit of the depths and to take himself for the spirit of the times. The spirit of this time is ungodly, the spirit of the depths is ungodly, balance is godly.

Next time I’m about to cast a harsh judgement on a stranger who offends me, can I allow myself instead to see them as the flawed and complex human that they are? Full of heartbreak, loss, ambition and disappointment, walking a volatile path of all the things they’ve ever failed at?