There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina’s first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you’ve misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.
Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something.
But now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.
Don’t you think it’s better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?
Now I wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is go to in some way otherthan just getting older.
I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.
…all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath.
Right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.
It’s hard being left behind. (…) It’s hard to be the one who stays.
It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.
I won’t ever leave you, even though you’re always leaving me.
I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I’m tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that’s been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by abscence?
Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her and was floating untethered in his mind. How am I supposed to live without you? It was not a matter of the body; his body would carry on as usual. The problem was located in the word how: he would live, but without Elspeth the flavour, the manner, the method of living were lost to him. He would have to relearn solitude.
You can still be cool when you’re dead. In fact, it’s much easier, because you aren’t getting old and fat and losing your hair.