Taking Sand Away

A student enters the scholar’s study.

“Master, I have brought the paper you requested.”

“Thank you. Leave it there.”

The scholar did not raise his head. His voice was scratchy, and beneath his eyes lay the darkest of bags. Across the desk, his hand continued its small, impatient journey.

“May I ask you something?”

“Of course. But be quick, as I must return to writing.”

“Why do you write so much? I have been here for a decade. In all that time, I must have brought you thousands of pages.”

The student glanced at the papers scattered across the floor. Some had been crossed through so heavily that little remained of the words beneath them.

The Master put down his pen.

“Come with me.”

He opened the door opposite his study. Beyond it stood a tower of paper, at least ten times the student’s height.

“What is this?”

“Do you see that window?”

High above them, a small rectangle of light interrupted the wall.

“That is where the tower is leading. In another three years, I expect to have written enough to climb it and look outside.”

The student stared at him.

“All of this work, just to reach a window?”

“Yes.”

“Could you not use a ladder?”

“If I wanted only to see through the window.”

The Master drew a page from a loose pile beside the tower and handed it to him.

“Read.”

The student read a few lines. He knew the argument; the Master had spoken against it only the previous evening.

“But you no longer believe this.”

“No. I had to write it before I could see what was wrong with it.”

“And you keep it?”

“It is part of what I stand upon.”

The student looked again at the tower.

“You see a very inconvenient means of reaching a window,” the Master continued. “I see essays, poems, arguments I could not finish, and books I could not have begun when you first arrived. The window gives me somewhere to go. The writing determines who will arrive there.”

“Then any reason would do?”

“A reason must be strong enough to bring you back tomorrow. It need not explain your entire existence.”

The Master took the page from him.

“Imagine a beach, and imagine giving yourself the task of taking its sand away. For a day, perhaps for a month, you would see almost no difference. The immensity of the shore would make a mockery of your hands. Yet each grain you carried away would be gone.

“After years, you might notice a hollow. Later, the hollow might become a channel. Water would enter where you once stood. The shape you had taken for something fixed would have begun to answer you.”

“But here you are adding, Master.”

“I am. And whilst I add to this tower, I take something away from the man who began it: an error he could not recognise, a question he was afraid to ask, a limitation he mistook for the edge of the world.”

The student held his gaze on the window.

“And when you can finally see through it?”

“Then I will discover what all these years have made me capable of seeing.”

The Master returned the page to its place.

“Perhaps I shall find another shore.”