profoundly absent
and apologetic. things thought in previous weeks:
- the unified self might be a fiction. the idea that one coincides with oneself only if one coincides with others might be misguided. how unsettling. isolation is truly stasis.
- it is not a good idea to climb trees with a bad ankle.
- whenever I go to a cemetery and stand over a grave of some famous and long-dead luminary, I am always jarred by a sudden inexpressible understanding. it sounds banal when I say it here and not in the intimate sun-dappled grove of foliage where time seems to still and exhale, where the grass is tall and pocked with white-grey markers of a thousand lives once lived. the understanding: that this person was once alive and did really exist; that his bones now lie beneath my feet, and were once infused with flesh, thoughts and animation, a being not unlike myself. at times like that, I understand the question more clearly than ever: what is it that departs?
- small epiphanies nearly always sound banal, & are perhaps best kept to oneself unless pronounced in the presence of one who understands deeply.
- one can never have too much tea.