It is not a person’s depth you must discover, but their ascent. Find their path from depth to ascent.

But sometimes the world disrobes, slips its dress off a shoulder, stops time for a beat. If we look up at that moment, it's not due to any ability of ours to pierce the darkness, it's the world's brief bestowal. The catastrophe of grace.

History is the gradual instant

When you are alone - at sea, in the polar dark - an absence can keep you alive. The one you love maintains your mind. But when she's merely across the city, this is an absence that eats you to the bone.

Trees for example, carry the memory of rainfal. In their rings we read ancient weather - storms, sunlight and temperatures, the growing seasons of centuries. A forest shares a history which each tree remembers even after it has been felled.

Like other ghosts, she whispers; not for me to join her, but so that, when I'm close enough, she can push me back into the world.

To share a hiding place, physical or psychological, is as intimate as love.