Chapter Eighteen — On the Way

In the evening I sat at home with an old atlas open on the table.

I was not looking for any particular place.

I simply ran a finger over the maps, the way one travels to places without leaving one's chair.

Here is the sea on which I have sailed so many times I have almost stopped counting.

Here are the port cities where I stepped off the ship in the morning and went out into streets I did not know.

Here are railway lines that crossed whole countries, and roads that wound between mountains and cliffs.

And on the map there were also small places I could not identify without leaning closer.

The cave I descended into.

The town I looked down on from above.

The shore of the Dead Sea, where I once stood at the lowest point of land on earth and looked at the water.

So many places.

And in each of them, without my planning it, a different thought arose in me.

⸻

When I began writing this book, I thought I was writing about the entities I imagined.

About Time, whom I was angry at as I stood on the ship's deck, and during our conversation began to understand slightly differently.

About Memory, whom I met in an antique shop in the form of an older woman, after I found an empty jewelry box and did not know why I wanted to take it home.

About Fear, the weary guard with the bundle of keys, who sat beside me on a stormy flight.

About Words, who had no faces, but reminded me of sentences spoken years ago that still remain with me.

About Beginning, who appeared in the form of a young woman in the morning on deck, and made me think how many things can still be begun, even after we have come a long way.

About Night, whom I met at 03:07 in a hotel room in a foreign city, when the quiet outside could not silence the thoughts.

About Love, in the form of a woman my own age, and about the elderly couple who sat not far from me, when the man offered his wife a scarf before she had even asked.

About the Sea, who needed neither a figure nor a voice to raise questions in me.

About Curiosity, the girl with the dusty shoes who ran ahead of me in a port city and wanted to know what lay beyond the corner.

About Longing, who arrived like a distant melody just as we passed a coastline I did not know.

And about Change, whom I met on my own street, beside the closed bakery and the cut-down tree.

And then there was the Road itself.

The trail of foam the ship left behind it on the last evening of the cruise, and the understanding that all these conversations were born as I moved from place to place.

⸻

But the book did not end there.

I kept traveling, and the questions kept coming.

On a long train between countries I thought about Distance, and about how one can sit beside a person and feel far from him, or live on different continents and feel very close.

In a cave I discovered a whole world beneath a quiet street, and asked myself how much we truly know about what hides beneath the surface.

On a mountain road I understood that the view from above can show us a wider picture, but does not cancel the difficulty of the road itself.

At a train station, while waiting for a delayed journey, I discovered that not all my thoughts need motion. Some of them arrive precisely when I am forced to stop.

And at a border crossing, before a barrier and a stamp in a passport, I thought about the borders we set for ourselves and those we cross without noticing.

Every place raised a question.

And sometimes one question led me to thoughts I did not know I had.

⸻

I looked at the atlas and tried to understand what all these conversations have in common.

At first I thought perhaps I was searching for answers to the great questions of life.

Why time passes so quickly.

Why we remember certain things and forget others.

Why we are afraid.

Why we long.

How love changes with the years.

And how one can go on beginning new things, even after experiencing quite a lot.

But the more I wrote, the more I understood that I am not always searching for a final answer.

Sometimes I only want to understand the question better.

There were conversations in which I changed my mind.

There were some in which I did not agree with the entity I imagined.

And there were also moments when I discovered I had no answer, even though I had thought I did.

Perhaps that was the greatest surprise of the writing.

Not the fact that I managed to imagine Time, Memory, or Fear speaking with me.

But the fact that sometimes, in my imagination, they said things I had not expected to think myself.

⸻

I thought of the woman I was when I began writing.

She was not very different from me.

And yet, it seems to me something changed in her along the way.

I did not become another person.

I still worry about the things that worry me.

I still long for people and periods that will not return.

I still sometimes grow angry at time passing too quickly.

And there are things I am still afraid to do.

But perhaps I listen a little more to the questions that arise in me, instead of hurrying to push them away.

Perhaps I am also a little less quick to decide that I already know.

⸻

I ran my finger over one of the maps again.

I thought of whoever will read this book.

Perhaps some of the conversations will remind him of thoughts he has had himself.

Perhaps he will disagree with me.

Perhaps a question that seemed especially important to me will not interest him at all, and precisely a small sentence will stay with him.

That is natural.

Each person arrives at words out of his own life.

With the people he loved, the places he has been, and the things he has not yet dared to do.

I did not write this book to explain how one should live.

I am not sure I would know how to explain that even to myself.

I wrote because I wanted to give a place to the questions that usually pass through my mind while I move on.

This time I decided to stop beside them.

To ask.

To listen to what arises in me.

And to write.

⸻

I closed the atlas.

Tomorrow an ordinary day awaits me.

Shopping, phone calls, things to arrange.

Perhaps I will go for a walk in the neighborhood and pass again by the closed bakery and the new building.

Perhaps nothing special will happen.

And perhaps I will see something I had not noticed before.

A person standing by a window.

A tree that grew in a place I had not noticed.

A short conversation I happen to overhear.

Perhaps one of those things will raise a new question in me.

And perhaps not.

I already know that one does not need to set out on a cruise or cross a border for a thought to begin.

Sometimes it is enough to leave the house.

And sometimes even that is not necessary.

⸻

I rose from the table and went to the window.

The street had already darkened.

A car passed slowly, and in one of the houses across the way a light came on.

I stood there a few moments.

I thought of all the places I have not yet been.

Of the people I will yet meet.

And of the questions that have not yet occurred to me.

I did not know which of them would come first.

And this time I did not try to guess.

I switched off the light in the room and went to sleep.

The atlas remained closed on the table.

Tomorrow, when I rise, life will go on as usual.

And I suppose that sooner or later I will find myself again in the middle of a conversation I did not plan.

Because my thoughts, as I have discovered, do not really know how to stay in one place.

Continue to the Appendix: Thoughts Along the Way, the Beginning

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