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A man sees how his siblings become strained over circumstances no one can control. As a child, the man played a game in which a message passed from one person to another until the message returned altered, no longer resembling what had first been said. What took place then without consequence appears again, though nothing about it is light.
With the siblings living on opposite sides of the Atlantic, what one sibling says does not arrive in the same way to the other sibling. What returns has shifted, not through intention, but through what each sibling already carries. The man tries to coordinate what is meant, but neither sibling fully understands the man, and the man does not fully understand the siblings. Each remains with the sense that what is being addressed has not been recognized.
At a certain point, the sequence no longer moves. What could be related no longer is. Each sibling returns to what has not been fulfilled, or to what could not be carried out, not because the action was refused, but because something intervened that no one could have anticipated. What might have been clarified earlier now remains where it is. The effort continues without altering it.
When the man describes what is taking place, he is told that he is philosophizing. What is happening does not take the form of explanation.
He says that what failed will have to be resolved differently, but that the matter remains possible if hope stays.
Nothing about this is exact. Situations do not remain within measure, and yet they are not abandoned. Patience allows the situations to continue without breaking.
At the same time, the man notices the difference when what he addresses does not return. What is given remains where it is, even when it is accurate. Nothing comes back altered by what is said. Something remains outside.
Later, a message arrives. The matter has been resolved. There is no reference to what preceded the resolution. Still, something has shifted.
Around the same time, he learns that a friend has taken his life. The man recalls how his friend spoke, often at length, about what had taken place within his family, about what he saw in others, and about what he had secured for himself. Nothing in what his friend said lacked clarity. The speech did not bring him closer to those who listened. The listeners remained with him as long as they could. There was nothing else to do.
The man does not try to make sense of it. The event does not follow from what was visible. What can be seen around the event does not account for it.
There are conditions that seem to surround it—resources, excess, ways of coping that do not alter what remains beneath them—but whether the conditions explain anything is not something that can be determined.
At some point, the man watches a film in which relations do not hold easily. What stands out is not the conflict, but how often what is offered is not taken in. What resists is not always refusal. At times, the resistance is the fact that allowing what is offered would require something to give way.
Nothing resolves this. Some people stay present to one another without knowing whether what they offer will be received.
Ricardo F. Morín, April 23, 2026, Bala Cynwyd, PA.
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Hunting Scene from a Persian Miniature
Watercolor on paper
21″x 29″
2002
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Afterword
It was said. It did not stay.
What returned was not the same.
He tried again.
It held for a moment.
Then it shifted.
Nothing was added.
Nothing removed.
Still it was not what had been.
He remained with it.
It did not remain.
There was no refusal.
No interruption.
It did not cross.
Between them the same.
What mattered did not carry.
Not hidden.
Not withheld.
It did not hold once said.
He felt it before it was lost.
After it could not be found again.
He stayed.
It did not return.
Nothing resolved.
Something was no longer there.
Not absence.
Not what had been.
No word for it.
Nothing followed.
Observations On Perception 
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