Going through an old notebook, I came across a verse I had jotted down a few years back, in my initial blogging days, when I had come across this verse on some blog. It's by W.S. Merwin, from Separation
"Your absence has gone through me, like thread through a needle
Everything I do, is stitched with its color."
Absence imagery generally associates with leaving a hole, making one inside you, that someone's not being there takes something away from you, something that you previously owned, and held dear. It leaves a void to be filled, a gap waiting to be replaced.
But this, someone had written, this brings up the idea of a sort of positive absence. An absence which enhances your being, not in the sense that you are better off without the person. But that somehow their absence has enriched your worldview.
Is that even possible? Someone whom you love, can their absence ever be better than their presence? In the courtly tradition, the poets used to believe that requited love was the best thing to have. Next best, they would say, is making a sonnet out of love which is unrequited. So how can absence possibly trump presence?
There are complex shades to words and phrases, and I rather believe that this verse implies something slightly different.
It purports the idea of how someone's absence creeps into every single thing you do, every activity you carry out and every word you breathe in. From how they would react to each scene of Breaking Bad you are watching, and your urge to call them up and narrate the thrilling tale of how you were today THIS close to hitting into a car, and your wonder about what they would say about whatever new activity you take up to distract yourself, their absence is everywhere, glaring into your face, reminding you constantly of what was once. That is exactly how absence works. A person just doesn't cease to be if they are gone, because if that was so, how would memory make one immortal?
No, absence weaves into every aspect, and the use of the word 'stitch' is what brings in the wonderful complexity of the situation. It's sowed into every idea that is born in your head, that is how insidious it is, tinting and coloring all the sights around you.
But experience, and the world, which is made up of millions of stories, teaches us that it fades.
The world, which is made up of tiny, little stories, tells us
that
it fades.