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I knew a man sad enough to tear the wallpaper in his room only to find drawings of a drowning man. Syllables of French that seemed to tell the story of a failed marriage, twenty-something hands that looked like they were attempting to escape the wall. The man swung his arms, clawed into walls, into designs, his whole existence colliding with the material world: I am a giant in this room; I am man; I am—and he was, in an effort to say goodbye to everything, able to find the culture and tenderness of handwriting in a different language—the feeling of discovery, and the feeling of discovery of a sadness not your own, of a secret leading to empathy that is sudden and beautiful like a kiss on the forehead, a slight tug at one’s hair from one’s grandfather before he sleeps one last and longest time. I have always hated French and its dictionary of misunderstandings. But I have also learned to hold onto this world and not to pick which parts to hold on to. Hold onto people, remember warmth is real, is possible, is what keeps us alive, and is what kills us. We cannot dislike the idea of people, not the idea of desperation leading to older desperation. This may be what wallpaper is: a key to a graceful way of loving—of hiding forever the true and, therefore, the beautiful—because survival may be the only way to remain true and beautiful. I know there are few things we can find in desperation; but we dig, still. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, but you are looking, you are not desperate; you are beautiful, and you are getting out of this place alive.
