I Relate

[anima]

"The pushing and noise increased. The dock was in tumult. Everyone screamed and shoved themselves forward with the exaggerated joy of people who have lost the standard to measure achievement in this world. Women cried hysterically; men wept hoarsely. Photographers took pictures, and reporters rushed from person to person, conducting hurried interviews. Then there occurred the same thing that always occurs when I am part of a crowd. Everyone became one family, while I remained an outsider. Nobody spoke to me, and I didn't speak to anybody. The secret power which joined them kept me apart. Eyes measured me absent-mindedly, as if to ask: What is (s)he doing here? After some hesitation, I tried to ask someone a question, but the other didn't hear me, or at least he moved away in the middle of my sentence. I might just have well have been a ghost. After a while I decided what I always do decide in such cases, to make peace with fate."

Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Son