An unceasing interrogation of the stories told to us by the schools now felt essential. It felt wrong not to ask why, and then to ask it again. I took these questions to my father, who very often refused to offer an answer, and instead referred me to more books. My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers - even the answers they themselves believed. I don’t know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined.

I was fascinated by place because no place had ever belonged to me; nor had I ever belonged to any place. That was also why, as a child, I was fascinated by the body. Perhaps, I thought, I could belong inside my own body. Perhaps I could know the streams of the veins in my wrists the way other people knew the streams in which they swam as children. Perhaps I could know the names of the bones in the back of my hand the way other people knew the names of the back roads that were shortcuts home. I could know the rhythm of my pulse like my friend Dan knew the rhythm of the approaching train in his hometown, the rhythm he woke up to and went to sleep to and hoped would lead him somewhere else someday. I never did get to know my body that way.

But the truth is I haven’t much changed. I still have so many of the same questions, like “Do we have control over our thoughts?,” but I am looking for a different way to answer them. I am looking for new names for old feelings. My soul is still my soul, even if I rarely call it that.

There are so many things I wish I could forget, but maybe “forget” isn’t quite right. There are so many things I wish I never knew.

Some days I sit there for hours, some days mere minutes, but I never bow my head. I never pray, never wait to hear God’s voice, I just look. I sit in blessed silence, and I remember. I try to make order, make sense, make meaning of the jumble of it all. Always, I light two candles before I go.