A Yellow Rose
Every now and then you experience something that touches you in a deeper place than the other mundane things you encounter daily. Something deep within you stirs, awakens. An inner voice whispers, “What is this that has so moved me?”
This can happen in certain geographic localities where we suddenly find ourselves startled. Goethe, upon arriving in Rome, declared, “At last I am born!” For another it might have been Africa, Paris, or an Irish countryside.
It can also be people who awaken us. This includes the minds of those we encounter when we read a great story or a great book. The person behind the ink, as it were, is a mind alive that can leave its mark on those who chance upon it. It may be a small thing but it transcends explaining.
For me, one such experience was a single description on a page of a story by Hemingway, “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife” from his first collection of short stories, In Our Time. Several years later it occurred again when I picked up an old Antioch Review from a garage sale and read the story which I have reproduced here, “A Yellow Rose” by Jorge Luis Borges.
What is it in this very short burst of light that touched me so deeply? Perhaps it was the density of the prose. Or perhaps it was the scope…
