Erasing the Margins
May 02, 2019 12:10 PM
Jerry Nehr
Erasing the Margins

I have written a book. It is a collection of essays on my experiences of connecting with other people and not connecting with them.

I wrote it because I roam back and forth between feeling connected and disconnected to you, to me, to us. These essays are my experiences during these wanderings. I wrote it because sometimes I “get you,” and believe that there is absolutely no distance between your and my humanity. I also wrote this book because sometimes, sadly, I am a stranger to you, a foreigner who errantly believes that you are “them,” and “us” is back from whence I came. I live both inside and outside the margins. I do this “drifting” regularly. Yet just one glance, one step toward or away from me, or perhaps a simple word that you and I exchange, can have the capability of pulling me to you or pushing me from you. You have that power over me. I have it over you. My hope is that these inexplicable travels of which I write between my kinship with you, and my isolation from you, might bring us back to each other, might widen the circle and erase the margins. And will remind us, as Rumi said, “We are all just walking each other home.”