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Thursday, June 7, 2018

Suddenly

Life seems a long time getting to its end and yet upon arrival it seems to have been a very short time after all. We have been used to entertaining thoughts of what comes next. We speak of this or that phase, the ex-wife and the next wife, learning from the past, transforming the future; and then one day we suddenly realize that essentially we have run out of time. There is no more space for starting anew, no wiggle room. There is no ladder, no alley, no tunnel. There is only a wall. This is not a maze. It is simply the edge of the page. 

Joan Didion, in Blue Nights, put it this way: "When we lose that sense of the possible we lose it fast. One day we are absorbed by dressing well, following the news, keeping up, coping, what we might call staying alive; the next day we are not." 

It is just this sudden. It is a dark light suddenly turned on. It is an unexpected, silent exclamation: "Oh!" We lose that sense of the possible and we lose it fast. In the twinkling of an eye. 

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