Seriousness

I am the oldest of two, but you are the youngest of three. By that I account for the way you spoke as though citing, that words didn’t quite belong to you. Sometimes, it is true, you spoke with great seriousness; to claim words as your own was an enormous task, but for the most part, you repeated satirically the expressions I would use, or mimicked my speech, or the speech of others.

Speech, for you, was lightness, a kind of laughter. I imagined you laughing at your sisters in your mimickry. They were serious, and you were – an imp; it was visible in the photograph your parents hung in their lounge: there was the imp, between the two others.

For my part, speech was deliberate, it did what it was told. Was that why I liked to lose that certainty by speaking to you? Yes, I loved for speech to lighten, to lose its orientation, and to rise from the scraps of countryside across which we walked. But sometimes that lightness changed its polarity – speech fell out of phase with itself, as though it spoke by way of what it could not say; as though communication could not communicate.

Something serious was to be said, and by way of lightness. Seriousness – it is true you distrusted abstract conversation. You’d heard too much of that; you felt excluded. But there was another seriousness, one which bore our speech and, I would say, placed it at stake.

You could say we did not speak deeply. Afterwards, when I left you, I would think, we said nothing at all – and isn’t that what you said, much later: we didn’t say anything. True, nothing was said. But still there was seriousness – still it was the condition of speech into which what we said seemed to set itself back. The surprise of speech, and that we could speak by way of the space it opened between us.

Sometimes, apart for months, years, we corresponded. I wrote too much; you wrote very little, and what you said seemed to say nothing. Pure froth – but was it that? There was a letter; something was written – and wasn’t that enough, that you’d addressed me?

Occasionally, a more decisive letter would come, and you would speak with great brevity. I have been very unhappy. I’ve decided to leave my job. Absolute letters. Decisive ones, in which a new turn was announced. Why did you need to tell me? For the same reason, I think, as you sent the others. What mattered was the address; what mattered was speech, and the distance of speech.

You joined what was said to what could not be said, the written to the unwriteable. With you, communication went by way of what could not communicate, speech by way of silence, and writing by what erased every word. Was it was also in order for speech to rest in silence that you wrote, and that I wrote to you? To rest, to be addressed – speech was lightened by that crossing, by the letters that were sent over the body of England.

Today, writing alone, I imagine my words are addressed to you. My words – not mine, because you are the guardian of my speech, just as I am the guardian of yours. Peace: I wanted them to rest in the unwriteable, to find peace there. And then it is as though we are still young, that this day joins itself to another, half our lives ago.