People, the past, intercepting time

People, the past, intercepting time

It is still unthinkable that those who caused us the greatest pain and turned us inside out could at some point in time have been totally unknown, unborn to us. We might have crossed them in numberless places, given them street directions, opened a door for them, stood up to let them take their seat in a crowded concert hall, and never once recognized the person who would ruin us for everyone else. I'd be willing to shave years from the end of my life to go back and intercept that evening under a cantilever when we both put our coats over our heads and rushed through the rain after coffee and I said, almost without thinking, I didn't want to say goodnight yet, although it was already dawn. I would give years, not to unwrite this evening or to rewrite it, but to put it on hold and, as happens when we bracket off time, be able to wonder indefinitely who I'd be had things taken another turn. Time, as always, is given in the wrong tense. -- Andre Aciman, "Lavender"

This resonates with me. Although I see it a little differently. I can't imagine ever giving street directions to those people, in my life, who would later cause me the greatest pain and turn me inside out, without recognizing those who would ruin me for everyone else. When I first met those people, I'm thinking right now of one particular person, so when I first met him, the attraction felt almost primal. It was as if I knew, on some level, what was to come and that his impact on me would be profound. I can't imagine ever opening a door for him and not feeling, to some extent, thunderstruck. Not sensing something. This quotation, from Colm Toibin's Mothers and Sons, speaks to how I feel about this: "Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain and regret and need and hollowness and a feeling as close to anger as I will ever be able to imagine."