“Close your hand,” said the old, mad pirate to the boy.  “And then open it again. Then close it again. Then tell yourself to open your hand, but don’t. Refrain from opening your hand. If you are careful, and you should be, you will be in a contradictory state of being – that of wanting to open your hand and that of keeping your hand closed. Keep doing that for some time. Maybe, look out the window. The sun is there. It’s always there in this city, this near-tropical city, this city of pirate ghosts. Maybe, read the paper. Or a good book by Algren or Bolaño. There are people in those books who want to do one thing and are doing the opposite thing. They are like you. After some time, your hand will become something else. It will still be a part of you, but it won’t exactly be yours. It’s an unreal sensation. It has to do with the invention of the soul or Otherness. Or biological circuitry. Neurons talking to neurons, boy! The only other way to feel this sensation is to pay attention to the minutes between wakefulness and sleep, those minutes which most resemble a maze of mirrors. I remember the first time I caught myself in those minutes. It happened rather late in my life. One night, just before falling asleep, I suddenly thought about a beautiful woman I had once known and how we had slept together and how when we did her hair fell onto my pillows like the curves of an Arabic letter. I also thought about how I had broken her heart. Close your hand and then open it again. Then close it again. Then tell yourself to open your hand, but don’t. If you catch yourself, you will know what it feels like to be someone else. The word for that is empathy. This, I promise, will get you far boy.”

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