Looking at him brought sadness to my heart. The slow movements, the vacant gaze, the strange childish expressions that would pass across his face—as if everything was confusing, as if everything was a surprise. He seemed nice, and kind; disarmingly innocent; a silent giant in the midst of chattering people, gazing around as if trying to follow but struggling. All with a gentle acceptance, as if this were a familiar thing for him. The glacial swivel of his head, the uncomprehending smile, if I hadn’t heard him speak, I’d have thought him on holiday from some remote corener of scandinavia.

But I can’t understand what it is about him that makes me sad. I felt genuinely heart-broken watching him climb, watching him so utterly disconnected from the frenetic chitter chatter of the people around him. Through his eyes, the world seemed such a complex and confusing place. Loneliness. There is no other word for it. Loneliness has a flavour all its own; wanting not to be alone, but not knowing how—right in the midst of life and somehow being passed by. It is worse than non-existence, worse than death, because the dead don’t feel dead, and the un-existing don’t know they don’t exist.

I wanted to go to him and talk to him, but my own distance prevented me. I, too, do not know how to bridge the chasm of basic isolation, not without help. There are those who hold out a hand, who invite you across—and with them it is easy. Of course, they make it easy. But when I don’t know and they don’t know, the effort only seems to make the void wider. Like magnets repulsed, gravity turned inside-out, it is as if a plexiglass wall has grown up between us, and though we shout, no sound comes through. And the way he just sat there, a thousand miles away with no expectation of anyone even trying, the polarisation of our respective magnets was simply too complete.

Nor did he seem discontent; I have no illusions that my sentiment arose with me exclusively as a result of my own sentimentality. But regardless, there is sadness therea wistful ache, an unspoken hunger, a wish that is kept secret even from myself. It can be experienced if one is sensitive to it, but it need not be either overwhelming, or even noticed. It hangs in the air like dust, only visible when you’re really looking for it, or when the sun breaks through the clouds and tumbles in through a window, casting its day-long arc across a shadowy room.