Seeker-Stress

           Seeker-Stress

          see-cur-stress:

The pain of misplacement

 

 

          When a possession goes missing, it leaves behind a void more vivid than the thing itself. The hole glows with bright darkness, in photographic-negative colors. Only the normal light of the lost thing, held in hand, can quench that burning shadow.

          So you run around, in frantic search of your lost possession. You look behind things, and under them. You ransack your pockets and your room and your mind. You review in intricate detail the day’s travels; you picture what you lost, and you wonder how to do without it, if you must.

          And when you do find the thing, it was in the most obvious place, but only in retrospect. With its return, relief flushes through you, and your life makes sense again.

          But not entirely. Now you hold your possession in your hand and you see it with your eyes, yet it still shines with the black light of absence. You tell yourself that it’s yours again; but it reminds you that it was never yours, nor is anything else.

Everything that you own is on loan.