Ghosts Among Us

. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother's face; from the prison of her flesh we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again. --Thomas Wolfe

I first read these words at 17. Grief-stricken, lost, impressionable, I read Look Homeward, Angel at the urging of a friend, now long-dead. We worshipped at the temple of his too-muchness of language and sensory detail and emotion. We visited his mother's boarding house many times, longed to touch the typewriter he used, to sit on the porch, to hear the boarding chatter and feel the restoring air of the healthy air of an Asheville long lost. We made our pilgrimage to the cemetery angel his father made, picnicked there, wondered at the inspiration of family strife.

I did not then have any inkling what Wolfe meant. Today, I do, and wish I didn't. But I still love the sound of his words: a stone, a leaf, an unfound door and the memories of friendship ended by too-early death.