I want to mention that I've just finished reading Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, a book that anyone who has lost a family member should read, especially anyone who lost them at a formative age. Robinson captures so well the fleetingness that an early experience of loss can cause one to superimpose on the world, the sense that as soon as something comes into view--like a ship that appears from behind a seaside cliff and sails toward the horizon--it is already going away. The sense that the beginning of anything is really the commencement of the first stages of its ending. And so the only way to feel any steadiness is to endeavor not to attach oneself, to wander, to believe one can move with the wind, though of course one can't, being attached to so many things. And then there is the absolute rightness of Robinson's ending, in which those we lose are only present in as much as their absence can be described in the minutest detail, such that it becomes a presence that only the imagination could observe, being too specific and clear to be observed in the flesh.
It's 4 am. Listening to Tears for Fears. After a smoke, going to sleep.
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