What happened? You detain me, is that the word? Detained - but from what? What was I doing? Something failed to happen, that's true. Or was it that what happened lost itself from the course of time? Detained - and how to reach the moment when something could happen? That it failed to do so is the way it continues to happen; it is its claim.
What does it want? To be past - to be let go - or is that what I want, to release the event into forgetting? It wants to belong to the future - yes, this is what it wants for itself -, but only by breaking the horizon of expectation, of bringing the future very close, so that it seems to burn between us.
But what burns? Nothing that could happen to us. Nothing possible. And yet that joins itself to what is humanly possible, and for us. Joins itself, unjoining the course of time. We are detained; we are held here, and we will always be held. This is the crossing, the crossing point. Which of us is here? Who am I for you, and you for me? What do we share?
Either way, there will be, for both of us, a way of feeling responsible for the event. As though it elected us, we who were not worthy of its demand. As though it called upon the ones who were least responsible, or least able to measure its demand. Why were we chosen, the weakest ones? Why when we will always be unequal to ourselves with respect to what occurred?
But it is by that weakness that we were chosen. Or weakness is its sign, that choosing. Henceforward, you will belong to the detour, that is what is said. You belong to what you cannot accomplish. It is by weakness that you will be responsible, even to the extent of wanting to repeat what happened - even in your weakness to want to re-enact it again, and as if for the first time.
'Let it happen again, and this time so that I can master it. Let it happen, and be brought under my control. I will make it happen. I will bring it under control.'
But this desire is only a sign of your weakness, and of your failure to complete the event. How can it be brought back into the course of life? How can it be let go, neglected, so that it joins the other moments that pass so quickly? But it will not allow itself to be neglected. Or it is neglect itself - it is what turns its face away from us. This is what we suffer, and suffer together.
'I can't help it.' - 'We can't help it.' - 'I'm too weak.' - 'We are each too weak.'