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7. THERE IS A PHOTOGRAPH OF MY MOTHER THAT NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN

In the fall, my mother went back to England to start university. Her pockets were full of sand from the lowest place on earth. She weighed 104 pounds. There's a story she sometimes tells about the train ride from Paddington Station to Oxford when she met a photographer who was almost completely blind. He wore dark sunglasses and said he'd damaged his retinas a decade ago on a trip to Antartica. His suit was perfectly pressed, and he held his camera in his lap. He said he saw the world differently now, and it wasn't necessarily bad. He asked if he could take a picture of her. When he raised up the lens and looked through it, my mother asked what he saw. "The same thing I always see," he said. "Which is?" "A blur" he said. "Then why do it?" she asked. "In case my eyes ever heal," he said. "So I'll know what I've been looking at." In my mother's lap was a brown paper bag with a chopped liver sandwich my grandmother had made for her. She offered the sandwich to the almost completely blind photographer. "Aren't you hungry?" he asked. She told him that she was, but that she'd never told her mother that she hated chooped liver, and eventually it became too late to tell her, having said nothing for years. The train pulled into Oxford Station, and my mother got off, leaving behind her a trail of sand. I know there is a moral to this story, but I don't know what it is.

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Taken from The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

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These beauteous forms I travelled among unknown men, in lands beyond the sea I wandered lonely as a cloud Dust as we are In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree Is the night chilly and dark? the night is chilly, but not dark This night, to share your couch with me "Off, woman, off! this hour is mine -- though thou her guardian spirit be The frost performs its secret ministry "tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs and vexes meditation with its strange and extreme silentness Dear babe, that sleepest cradled by my side But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze by lakes and sandy shores Since my young days of passion --joy, or pain--- Perchance my heart and harp have lost a string Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art an unseen seaph, we believe in thee But I have lived, and have not lived in vain I want a hero: an uncommon want But sweeter still than this, than these, than all, is first and passionate love No more--no more-- Oh! never more, my heart, Canst thou be my sole world, my universe! All tragedies are finished by a death all comedies are ended by a marriage Some persons say that Dante meant theology By Beatrice, and not a mistress The awful shadow of some unseen power floats though unseen among us I met a traveller from an antique land My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my words, ye mighty, and despair" Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud i fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! Teach me half the gladness that thy brain must know But in this life of error, ignorance, and strife, where nothing is, but all things seem, and we are shadows of the dream I weep for Adonais --he is dead! "Saturn, look up!--though wherefore, poor old King? I have no comfort for thee, no not one Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane in some untrodden region of my mind Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:-- do I wake or slepp? O attic shape! fair attitude! She dwells with beauty --beauty that must die Art thout not of the dreamer tribe? the poet and the dreamer are distinct...the one pours out a balm upon the world, the other vexes it. Where are the songs of spring? aye, where are they?

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