Chapter Thirteen — The Entity of Distance

The train left the station before dawn.

I sat by the window, and within a short time the city began to recede behind us.

The tall buildings gave way to low houses, then to open fields and trees standing along the track.

Now and then a narrow road appeared that accompanied us for a few minutes, then disappeared behind a hill.

The journey was long.

A few hours to the border, and from there a few more hours in the second country.

I was in no hurry to get anywhere.

There is something in a long train journey that I especially love.

On a plane I sometimes feel that the time between takeoff and landing is only waiting.

In a car I am busy with the road, the turns, the traffic around.

But on a train I can sit by the window and watch the distance spread out slowly.

There is no need to do anything.

The places simply pass before me.

I thought about how at every moment I move away from the place I left and draw closer to a place I have not yet seen.

The very same movement does both things.

⸻

I tried to imagine Distance as an entity I could converse with.

But I could not give it a face.

Distance did not seem to me like a person.

It reminded me of the gap between two seats, the field between two villages, the silence that sometimes forms in the middle of a conversation.

"Can you even be an entity?" I asked in my imagination.

"Why not?"

"Because you have no form of your own."

"The space between two things also has meaning."

I looked at the empty seat beside me.

"But you are not really there."

"I am everywhere there are two things that are not at the same point."

"So you are also between me and home?"

"Of course."

"And between me and the people who stayed in it?"

"Yes."

"And between me and myself?"

"Sometimes."

I smiled.

"That you will have to explain to me."

"Have you never felt far from the person you would like to be?"

I looked out the window.

The landscape went on changing, but the question stayed with me.

⸻

"There is something strange about distance," I said. "I am the one traveling, but the more I advance, the more home also moves away from me."

"Because distance does not belong to only one side."

"What do you mean?"

"If you are a thousand kilometers from home, home is also a thousand kilometers from you."

"Geographically, of course. But emotionally it does not always feel that way."

"For example?"

"When I am far from home, I think of it. But home does not think of me. The people in it perhaps do."

"So perhaps you are mixing distance with longing."

I thought of the conversation I had already conducted in my imagination with Longing.

"Possibly. After all, one can be far from a place and not long for it at all."

"And one can long for a person sitting right beside you."

"True."

I looked at the passengers around me.

A young woman slept with her head leaning on the window.

An older man read a newspaper.

Two people sitting a few rows ahead of me conversed in a language I did not understand.

We were all in the same car, on the same train, and yet each of us was immersed in a world of his own.

⸻

"There are people I love very much, but they live far from me," I said.

"And does the distance make it hard for you?"

"Sometimes very much."

I thought of phone calls and of messages sent at different hours of the day.

Of the wish to sit beside a beloved person, drink coffee with him, or simply be in the same room, without a special reason.

"One can hear a voice on the phone," I said, "and one can see a face on the screen. But it does not always replace presence."

"What do you miss?"

"The small things. Sometimes I do not want a long conversation. I only want to know that we can meet without planning everything in advance."

"So distance turns even simple things complicated."

"Exactly."

"And yet, there are bonds that endure despite the distance."

"True. And there are bonds that weaken even when living close."

I thought of people who were a significant part of my life, and today we almost do not speak.

There was not always a quarrel.

Sometimes life simply led us in different directions.

At first the conversations became shorter.

Then the intervals between them grew.

Until one day I noticed that a long time had passed since we last spoke.

"How does it happen that people drift apart without deciding to?" I asked.

"Perhaps because a bond also needs room in life. And if no room is made for it, other things fill it."

"But sometimes one conversation brings the closeness back at once."

"And sometimes it reveals to you how much you have changed."

I did not especially like the second possibility.

But I knew it existed.

⸻

The train passed a wide river.

The water flowed in the opposite direction to our travel.

"You said earlier that there are things that can be understood only from a distance," I reminded the imagined entity.

"True."

"Why?"

"When you stand very close to something, you see mainly the details. When you move away, you can see how they connect."

I thought of periods in my life in which I was so busy with what was happening that I could not grasp the wider picture.

Only after time passed could I identify things I had not noticed before.

"But sometimes distance also makes us forget important details," I said.

"True."

"So how will I know whether I am seeing things more clearly, or simply remembering them differently?"

"You will not always know."

I watched the river disappearing behind us.

"You do not give me much confidence."

"You ask certainty of me, and I am only distance."

I smiled.

Perhaps there was something in that.

From a distance one can see things one did not see up close.

But one can also err.

Time changes the way we remember, and distance changes the details we manage to notice.

Sometimes both things help us understand.

And sometimes they actually move us away from the truth.

⸻

The passenger sitting across from me raised his eyes from the book.

For a moment our gazes met.

We smiled at each other, and he went back to reading.

I thought about how we sit less than a meter apart, and yet I know almost nothing about him.

I do not know where he is traveling, who is waiting for him, whether he is happy or worried.

"How far can two people sitting across from each other be?" I asked.

"Very far."

"And perhaps precisely one conversation would have changed that."

"Perhaps."

"So why do we not always talk?"

"Because not every distance needs to be narrowed."

I looked again at the passenger.

He seemed immersed in his book.

"True," I said. "Sometimes a person simply wants to be left alone."

"And you too sometimes want to be alone."

"Of course."

"So perhaps distance is not always something that separates painfully. Sometimes it allows privacy."

I thought about that.

There are people we want very close to us.

And there are moments when we need a little space, even from the people we love most.

Closeness does not have to be constant presence.

And sometimes precisely the ability to move a little away allows us to return and meet out of desire.

⸻

"I want to ask you about another kind of distance," I said.

"Which?"

"The distance between me and who I once was."

The landscape in the window changed again.

Green fields gave way to low hills.

"Sometimes I think of decisions I made twenty or thirty years ago," I continued, "and I find it hard to understand how I thought then."

"And do you regret them?"

"Some of them. But not only. Sometimes I am simply surprised at how much I have changed."

"So perhaps you are looking at yourself from a distance of years."

"But that is still me."

"True."

"And that is what is strange. I know the thoughts I had, the people I loved, the things I wanted. And yet, if I met the woman I was then today, I am not sure we would agree on everything."

"And perhaps she too would have trouble understanding you."

I smiled.

"Probably."

I thought about how one can return to a place where one once lived.

One can stand before an old house, walk in a familiar street, even meet people we knew then.

But one cannot return to that moment in life.

The place perhaps remains.

We no longer do.

"So there is a distance that cannot truly be closed," I said.

"Yes."

"And that is not necessarily a bad thing."

"Why?"

"Because if there were no distance between me and who I was, perhaps it would mean I had not changed at all."

⸻

The hours passed.

At one of the stations new passengers boarded, and others got off.

The car filled for a moment with the noise of suitcases, footsteps, and conversations, and then quiet returned.

"There is something I love about long journeys," I said.

"What is it?"

"The possibility of being far from my routine for a while."

"What do you gain from it?"

"Sometimes I manage to think about things without everything waiting for me at home entering the thought at once."

"And do your problems disappear when you move away?"

"No."

"So what changes?"

"Perhaps the place they occupy within me."

I thought about how at home everything is connected to another task.

The phone rings, there are things to arrange, people to answer, decisions to make.

On the train I do not have much to do.

I can look out the window and let the thoughts advance at their own pace.

"But here too they are not always pleasant," I said.

"Of course."

"Sometimes precisely when I am far from home, I think more about things that worry me."

"So distance does not always grant quiet."

"No. But it changes the surroundings in which I think. And sometimes that is enough to see something differently."

⸻

The train began to slow.

By the time, we were approaching the border.

I took the passport out of the bag and laid it on my knees.

"I have one more question," I said to Distance.

"I am listening."

"Is there a distance that cannot be bridged?"

I did not hear an answer at once.

I thought of people who drifted so far apart that they no longer knew how to start speaking again.

Of places we will not be able to return to as we knew them.

And of periods in life left behind.

"I suppose there is," I said at last. "There are distances that cannot be undone."

"And what does one do with them?"

"Perhaps one learns to live with them. And perhaps one tries to preserve what can still be preserved."

"And if you want to draw closer?"

"Then sometimes one must take the first step."

"Even if you do not know whether the other side will come closer in return?"

I thought about that.

"Yes. But one must also know when to stop trying. Not every person wants the same closeness."

"So here too you have no single answer."

"Apparently not."

⸻

The train stopped at a small station near the border.

Through the window I saw a sign in a language I did not know well.

A few passengers rose from their seats, others searched for their passports in their bags.

I thought of the way I had traveled since the morning.

Home was now very far.

But within a few hours I will arrive at a new place, and the distance to it will become the memory of a journey.

"Do you know what is strange?" I said.

"What?"

"When I draw closer to one place, I necessarily move away from another."

"True."

"So perhaps there is no way to be close to everything important to me at the same time."

"Apparently not."

I looked at the passport on my knees.

I thought of the people and places that were part of my life, of those who are near and those who remained far.

I will not be able to narrow all the distances.

But perhaps I can choose better where I want to be present, even when I cannot be there in body.

⸻

The train began to move again.

The passenger across from me closed the book and put it in his bag.

Outside appeared houses I had not seen before, new signs, and a landscape that kept changing.

I thought about how distance is not only what separates two places.

It is also what allows us to feel the difference between them.

Sometimes it hurts.

Sometimes it grants freedom.

And sometimes it simply reminds us that we cannot be everywhere at once.

I put the passport in the bag and looked out the window again.

In a few more hours I will arrive.

But at that moment I did not want to hurry the journey.

I wanted to go on sitting, watching the places pass, and feeling the distance change slowly, kilometer after kilometer.

Continue to Chapter Fourteen: The Entity of Depth

© 2026 Nurit Rozenblat. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed without the author's prior written permission.