A student, a young woman, in a fourth floor hallway of her lycée,
perched on the ledge of an open window chatting with friends
between classes;
a teacher passes and chides her, Be careful, you might fall,
almost banteringly chides her, You might fall,
and the young woman, eighteen, a girl really, though she wouldn't
think that,
as brilliant as she is, first in her class, and beautiful, too, she's often
told,
smiles back, and leans into the open window, which wouldn't even be
open if it were winter,
if it were winter someone would have closed it (Close it!)
leans into the window, farther, still smiling, farther and farther,
though it takes less time than this, really an instant, and lets herself
fall. Herself fall.
A casual impulse, a fancy, never thought of until now, hardly thought
of even now . . .
No, more than impulse or fancy, the girl knows what she's doing,
the girl means something, the girl means to mean,
because, it occurs to her in than instant, that beautiful or not, bright
yes or no,
she's not who she is, she's not the person she is, and the reason, she
suddenly knows,
is that there's been so much premeditation where she is, so much
plotting and planning,
there's hardly a person where she is, or if there is, it's not her, or not
wholly her,
it's a self inhabited, lived in by her, and seemingly even as she
thinks it
she knows what's been missing: grace, not premeditation but grace,
a kind of being in the world spontaneously, with grace.
Weightfully upon me was the world.
Weightfully this self which graced the world yet never wholly itself.
Weightfully this self which weighed upon me,
the release from which is what I desire and what I achieve.
And the girl remembers, in this infinite instant already so many times
divided,
the grief she felt once, hardly knowing she felt it, to merely inhabit
herself.
Yes, the girl falls, absurd to fall, even the earth with its compulsion to
take unto itself all that falls
must know that falling is absurd, yet the girl falling isn't myself,
or she is myself, but a self I took of my own volition unto myself.
Forever. With grace. This happened.
C.K. Williams (2003)
