Julie Carr

from A Guide for the Perplexed

The experience of terror…dislocates time, that most abstract of all humanity’s homes.

—W. G. Sebald

Begin again and also again begin. 

The color blue: “It speaks.” 

First the feet and hands, then the lips. First the lips and then the feet and hands. The eyelids. The lips. 

The existence of an infinite magnitude is impossible. (i)

The existence of an underground heart, of a fire in the throat, of a crow on the step, of a silent thought: 

It was too cold for rain, too warm for snow. The river was grey and moving fast. The sky also. Too cold for rain, warm for snow. Walking, we walked with my uncle and my aunt toward the river, grey and moving fast.

A man entering a building whipped his head around to see who’d said what I’d said.

The co-existence of an infinite number of finite magnitudes: likewise impossible. (ii)

Two plus two does not. Neither does a river and a bridge. There is no cup without. And no bush under which. We could watch each other burn, becoming gas for trees. But there is no tree that waits. And also no cloud that we can. 

Once, we sat face to face across a tiny round table teetering on the edge of a sidewalk. Your walking stick leaned against your knee. Though I had come to you for guidance, had called to you from my seat behind the wheel, had called to you from my kitchen counter, had called to you from inside a dream, now, finally I had traveled to this city where I would meet you at this teetering table. But you had no guidance to give. Rather, you were, like I was, tired. It had been an effort for you to leave your apartment, to descend the stairs, to walk to the café, to face me in this way. I had taxed you. The guidance I craved would not, from you, be forthcoming. Where then would I find it? 

How we swam in each other. 

But your eyes that swam in me also looked away. They looked away and down at the hand that rested on the knob of the walking stick. I’d hoped you would take on the status of “guide,” but in looking away, you refused. It was as if refusing was an invitation. 

It was as if the sky had turned red while we were sitting face to face with our eyes swimming in one another’s eyes. I too was tired, taxed.

My walking stick leaned against my knee. My breath heavy. The man behind the counter gazed at my throat. With a quiet voice he complimented my stick. Nice stick, he said. 

A vignette arose as if out of smoke: 

She’s not communicating; she’s pretty closed off, the grandmother says. The world is run on fear, her son answers. There’s a song about that, says his mother. The existence of a thing that is infinite is impossible. If it is infinite, it is not a thing, says the father. 

Together they look at the body on the ground.

First the feet and hands, then the lips. First the lips and then the feet and hands. The eyelids. The lips. 

Two further scenes both precede and follow from this one. One is of the children who eat each other. The second is of a young woman buried alive in a pit of corpses. (iii)

The woman who has been buried alive in a pit of corpses waits for the shooting to stop. Many more bodies fall for many hours. When the quiet finally arrives, she waits a bit longer, just to be sure. Then, she pushes the corpses off. They are heavy, but they are not 

infinite. 

The river was grey and moving fast. The sky also. Too cold for rain, too warm for snow. My uncle walked more quickly than his wife, who, like many people with a fluid sense of time, was unsure of her step. She tended to get distracted, to shift direction, to focus on small details of view or ground, most of which brought some form of delight. I kept pace with my uncle while my husband followed behind with my aunt, pausing when she paused, looking at what she looked at: a boat, the iron work of a gate, the gnarled trunk of a tree. We arrived at the dock just as the ferry was pulling out, so sat on a damp bench to wait. My aunt’s dementia had, it seemed, made her hungry, perpetually hungry. She’d eaten her soup, her salad, her two pieces of bread, and whatever scraps were left on my uncle’s plate, and now she was hungry again. 

Later, on the ferry: we laughed at the wet window pain. 

My walking stick leaned against my knee. I gazed at the knob and I was perplexed. The things I wanted to know, I feared, were things I wasn’t going to find out. I would head in the wrong direction, research the wrong archives, read the wrong books. It was hopeless to even begin; I had not yet even articulated my questions. 

Like my aunt, I had a tendency to get distracted. 

—————

i Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, Part II, prop. I.

ii Maimonides, prop. II, paraphrase.

iii These scenes occurred in Ukraine. They are described in Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Very similar scenes can be found in testimonies from survivors of genocides and politically enforced famines from many places in the world before and after. My maternal ancestors are from Kolki, Ukraine. As far as I know, all who had not emigrated beforehand were murdered by the Nazis in 1941.