Nongrasping

Painted in egg tempera on cradled panel.

LOCAL WOMAN RECOVERED MIRACULOUS 2 WEEKS AFTER FALLING DEEP IN BUBER'S PHILOSOPHICAL PROSE (As reported to Erin)
Last summer at a potluck, a friend told me there was someone he wanted me to meet. "His name is Martin. I think you'll really like him."
We connected a few weeks later. Martin Buber. Dark-eyed and deep: Deep as a well. He would turn to me and say things like, "I require a You to become. Becoming I, I say You. All actual life is encounter."
Do I have to tell you that I fell hard for him? Very hard. It was a whirlwind--I spent every evening with him. And every day thinking about him. I just wanted to waste the rest of my summer in his company. (Luckily, this was mid-August, and there wan't that much summer left to waste.)
During the day, I'd walk the beach and look at the shells. I'd be careful to keep my glance casual and only pick up the ones that I thought I'd really keep. Once in my hands, I felt bad tossing any back and tried to do it surreptitiously, denying that it was on account of any shortcoming. They were all beautiful, but how many could I really make space for in my life?
Then one evening, he turned to me and said, "this, however, is the sublime melancholy of our lot that every You must become an It in our world. However exclusively present it may have been in the direct relationship--as soon as the relationship has run its course... the You becomes an object among objects, possibly the noblest one and yet one of them, assigned its measure and boundary."
Yeah. The writing was on the wall.
The next day, when I returned to the sand pit sure enough--he was gone.
I mean--I was really hurt. I thought we had a relationship.
Erin pushed the bottle of sauv blanc across the counter. She laughed and looked me in the eye. "That, Xanthippe, is why we don't *marry* philosophers."
Yeah. I guess that's right.

(Quotes attributed to Martin Buber taken from Walter Kaufman's 1970 translation of I and Thou, Martin Buber, 1923.)