Together, we join in a stillness that is greater than the sum of us, to which we have given a life of its own. It is our helper. We all want to join as closely as possible to it. Perhaps this is why we don’t see each other or speak to each other. We do speak, and see, but we do it at a certain angle to each other. It’s not quite a matter of keeping up appearances. After all, who are we appearing to? It might just be the last vestiges of an old habit. It could also be a little favor we do each other, giving each other the slightest nudge only so that we can turn with a quiet pleasure back to our own silence again. I think, though, that we do it primarily to reassure each other that our silence is not the kind that masks resentment or signals it.

Perhaps one day I will quit my job and remain here all the time. I think I would like that, but the power of this peace is strong. I don’t need to quit my job, remain here all the time, because the peace is inside me. It is me. Not enough, but more and more. Is it that I want to live my life in a dream? I think what I want is to live without knowing or feeling it. I don’t want to die. I know for a virtual certainty that none of us do. If you want to die, you die, you don’t move here. You move here because you want to live without knowing it. You aren’t looking to live some dream or other, an adventure of glorious sex and righteous violence. You want to live in a dreamy way, absently, wandering without being lost. You want to be a dream instead of being yourself. The dream I am becoming is not a dream of anything. In the dream I am becoming, the streets are the same, the houses, the people, the sky, my body, are all the same. The events of the day are the same. So, what’s the difference? Time. It passes through me now. I’m becoming a perfect filter for time. It passes through me, and nothing clings. There’s no trace of it. Nothing of me clings to it, either; nothing of me is borne away, nothing of me washes downstream, lodges on the bank. No one downstream knows I am upstream. I’m moving into the future without touching it, like a spaceman walking on nothing in outer space.

“Oh my God!”

Your voice shook me like thunder. Suddenly I was awake, at work, blinking, and my hand—my hand was on fire. You were there, shock on your face.