Excerpt

"Long ago, when the Bedouins were roaming the deserts, they used to take frequent rests, not to rest their camels, but so that their souls would have time to catch up. The soul's speed is different, you see. Just think how many lost and late souls there are who've missed the caravan, still roaming through the desert of space. I can hear them weeping. I lie back at night and watch the moon- where I'll be in a couple hours. Do you know what the basic substance of space is? What it's made of? It's made of loneliness. And loneliness is volatile- it expands to fill the area around it.

My grandfather, your great-grandfather, lived in a house he built himself, worked in his garden, and the farthest he ever got was the forest near his village- so his loneliness was only as big as his house and his small garden. My father's loneliness was the size of the apartment and the city he moved to. My grandfather used to say that my dad had 'run away' to the city. Then I 'ran away' to another country, and now you yourself have run away to somewhere in space. I've been thinking tonight about what your loneliness is like: does it have the dimensions of the universe itself? Is it lighter and more rarified? What is its mass? How does gravity affect it?

In the past, loneliness used to be more concentrated- smaller. You could tame it, pet it like a cat. Now I find it impossible to cope with its new cosmic proportions. Now I'll never be able to finish my 'Treatise on the Fractal Geometry of Loneliness': I can't put it all into an equation, can't figure it out . . . Now that I've grown old, you know, I've started complaining, turning into my father and grandfather. And it's time I went back to them. Don't hate yourself for having come too late; it will be enough for me to know that you are already on your way."

-From "And All Turned Moon" by Georgi Gospodinov