Is it your finitude I also touch, when I touch your skin? Vulnerable one, you are exposed to dying on all sides. Dying is close, dying is coming, and isn’t it a miracle that you are alive, that your life is the greatest of risks, a living adventure? But my adventure, too. Mine – because I am exposed in your exposure, vulnerable in all that exposes you to dying.
Am I fearful of myself in you? But your vulnerability is not an analogue of mine; it came first; I learnt of what I was not through you, by way of you. To touch you is not to touch myself, but to be touched, to feel the pressure of risk, and the closeness of dying. I am afraid not for myself, but for you.
How is it you survive from day to day? How is it I’ve never received a visit from the police to tell me you are dead? Protection: holding you, it is not that I would hold myself in my own arms. Holding you, I am also held; I know my own vulnerability by way of yours; know that I will always be too vulnerable to protect you.
Held – but also held out into dying, into the remorselessness of dying. How is it you have survived this long? How is it you live so close to dying?
Lars Iyer's Blog 