Return home

"Describe your land to me," he asked me. I was returning by train to my hometown for the summer. I carried a finely ornamented notebook in which I scribbled along the way. This was before the end of calligraphy, when I could still write by hand. (I remember another persistent image: that of a machine having existed for years at sea, near the coast. I was a child, and people told me that the machine washed the water. The machine altered the view, like the tip of an iceberg. Over time, however, the machine became part of the landscape. I don't think anyone has a poetic memory of this. I was tormented by the immobility of the machine in the face of the draining effort, which seemed excessive to me. The machine in the sea would begin the seaside coda we are still experiencing.) I was on my way to Cascais, although still very far away. Upon arrival, I walked up the street from the station. I met the usual Mr. Pedro on a corner. I don't know if he realized who I was. He approached me, took a few dizzy steps, and fell dead into my arms. His fall on me was the closest I've ever been to my homeland. How does this answer your question? If I try to explain what the landscape is like when I get home, I immediately think that getting home isn't in the landscape. It might seem that on the way back we cross a spatial boundary beyond which we are safe, but the mere direction we take can be what pacifies us. At the station, the trains harbor fugitives. The relief of arriving home is linked to the joy inherent in the possibility of getting lost, into which we would slip if we were others. There, where we wouldn't get lost, is where we can get lost. I see the sea along the way. I still haven't memorized the order of the stations. Reading on the train trivializes the interval. I often imagine I died, the train twisted over the sea and everything behind me, a late afternoon in Pompeii—and everything from then on, as if I could think posthumously. Upon arrival, I see the town's madman pass by. He gets up from a bench and walks the streets. Their screams, which don't frighten, lend the night a note of imminence that we know, however, is inconsequential. The wandering madman describes the town in circles and, in doing so, makes it dramatic. He is not a landscape fixture. In our absence, he is the caretaker of the town's existence, which might otherwise evaporate. He brings us here, arranged by category, with a vigilance that has gradually diminished curiosity. We finally arrive home when those who would have put us on alert take care of us. Those who care surrender and conquer the objects of their care. "Concentration," I read in Feuerbach, "is the condition of prayer, but it is more than a condition; prayer itself is concentration—the abandonment of all distractions, of all disturbing outside influences." Does the madman tire of the town? It is sad that the madman does not rest from the town. He has lost himself in paradise.