What Good Is Paradise Without Love?

Beyond the horizon, there is a kind of promise. It may be the song we know, the image of a boundary crossed, or simply that human desire to discover what begins beyond the edge. Perhaps that is why dreaming is so beautiful: for a few moments, the impossible agrees to be imagined.

That is what I thought when I watched Fernanda cross the horizon of All Saints Bay. In the split second when her head reached a height that seemed to belong to the sky, perhaps another world appeared. I do not know whether she saw a dragon, a ship plunging over the edge, a suspended city, or nothing beyond her own movement. I would rather not decide for her. The marvelous needs to retain some freedom.

Love can emerge as a force of invention. Perhaps it is what transforms a physical crossing into desire, height into vertigo, and a jump into a promise. The body rises, but it is the imagination that can travel much farther.

From where I stood, an incredulous crowd watched the jump. No one doubted that Fernanda could do it. The astonishment was in the height she reached, as if, for a moment, she had shifted the measure of what was possible into the territory of the unimaginable.

Perhaps that is paradise: the brief moment when we believe we can cross the horizon. And if there is love in that passage, perhaps to love is to invent a world where going farther makes sense.