… This world is, this world is
Long on hunger, short on joy
How much longer
You gonna keep the world hungry, boy?…
- Jackson Browne, Singer-songwriter, 1986

We had just come out of an old store in old Zürich owned by an old man, full of things old and olden. A space where one immediately sensed there was love there, love in the collection, love in its collector. It is there that I first saw it.

In a darkened corner, slanted against the wall, as if leaning to support its tired foot. And I reached out to touch it, not to move it from where it stood slanted, but just to touch it.

“What is it?” I said.

The old man took forever to answer. “It’s a walking stick”. And then he turned away to go back to his worktop. It was evident he was preparing to close the store.

“Could we buy this?” I asked, ever so softly. 

I was not following the conversation that ensued. Apparently it belonged to a person who had crossed the mountains and settled in the valley. She may have come from far.

“It has been there for thirty, may be even forty, years.” It was clear that the old man did not want to part with it.

And yet there it was, in that olden, darkened corner. Does it remember its owner?

I could hear the sounds of the soft breeze that blew the morning she left her village. Did she look back one last time or did the sounds of children just fade away?

Why did she leave? Was the family with her when she left or were they someplace else? And still: why did she leave?

Like their neighbours, whose houses were close enough to hear louder conversations, they lived simply. The table, the only table in the house, had wonderful imperfections on its surface, the wood long since having turned a golden brown from touch and care.

And the smell of wonderful smells you almost take for granted in a place where you have lived all your life. Everything seems to dissolve together in ether: the singing of that bird in the larger tree, the distant sounds of bells of cows, the even more distant scents of unknown blossoms in the hills.

And yet: why did she leave?

There is none now who can answer, save for this stick which knows all and yet chooses to speak none. Did she cry as she left? Was it a howling painful cry that one cries when one has lost her baby? Or was it a silent cry because it was so loud that it had become silent? Was she an older person that she needed the stick or was it the weight of memory that she carried which caused the need for such a support?

Perhaps this is how the stick speaks: in questions rather than with answers. And perhaps it will speak to anyone who approaches it with enough love.

The world needed to see this, the world needed to feel.