There is a place, but I don't know where.  I don't know how to find it, or even who to ask.  I have been there.  I know it's real.  And I wish I never knew it existed. 

Communal laughter, and music.  Close gatherings of quaint and festive groups; parties in the night.  Gentle days of warm sunshine, and breezes lifting the intimate whispers of couples walking hand in hand.  And beauty; such unspeakable beauty, awful beauty, tender and untouchable beauty.  It breaks your heart.  I wish I could just die and stay away, but it is the inevitable place, an unavoidable agony-joy, an unendurable sensitiveness, and none but God can make it go away. 

And He won't. 

I can see it as from a distance, its flags and dancers make but tiny bright movements far away.  Or I can hear its oceanic mirth and passion engulf me all around, yet be unable to see or touch a thing.  And if I feel it touch me—like now—it has no sound, nor anything that I can see; it passes through my soul like a phantom penetration, and it leaves me crumpled on the floor. 

I wonder how those god-like creatures who stroll those streets ever got to be that way.  How did they ever learn to feel and taste, to love and touch and sing, all in one place?  How can they bear that lightness?  How can they touch all that joy without, themselves, exploding into a million incandescent parts?  I know how. 

They drink.  Like fish they drink.  That must be it.  They cultivate a drunken semiconsciousness so they can stand the light, and survive proximity to such a multitude of brilliances all gathered in one place.  Is their invincibility evidence that they possess transcendant love, an achievement of which I am just jealous?  Or is their apparent invincibility a sign of their insentience, while over here, away from heaven, I am the one who buckles beneath love's real and crushing weight?