Meeting with Nietzsche

Primordial stone structures rise out of the ground like the most stubborn weeds in a steadily maintained garden. These buildings, not painted like the bright tiger lily’s and daffodils just a couple blocks east, were a reminder of antiquity of man. The stones themselves, rings, visibly announcing their age. I opened a tall arched door of one building and went up the steps to room with the only lit window in the place.

A small lamp burned dimly in the corner of the cramped desk. Hunched over a series of papers his hand feverishly dashed back and forth across parchment, pen swirling in a constant battle with his brains commands, and the fingers responses. As his left swept a heavily inked page over to reveal a new challenge, his right released the pen, tried to stretch out and relax like the dirt encrusted hands of a three card molly dealer on street corner, but was unable to extend very far.
His hands were old and worn. Not in the calloused way, strengthened and protected from years of hard labor. These hands were worn from holding a pen for too long, from the emptiness that hand carried around otherwise, never knowing the feel of another in a mutual interlocked grasp. No jewelry adorned any of fingers above the swollen and gnarled knuckles he fumbled with every day. I’ve heard it said that one can see the soul through the eyes, but his hands were the doorway to his soul.

“did the sight of these buildings when you were little, force your hand to write like this?” I asked him.

“Well it would take a lot of force to have a hand leave a mark on this building, it’s made of heavy stone.” With an incredulous look on his face, he turned back down to the desk and paper, the pen and struggle. His body language gave off the impression of someone annoyed with a disturbance of his solitude. Breaking his focus on the tug of war with the pen was a grave offense, one not to be forgiven easily. I proceeded down stairs and out to the street without another word, and headed east towards the daffodils and tiger lily’s.