the ant

"Sometimes you have to be knocked out, just to stop; when you're in that state all you want to do is just sleep, and rest your body and your brain. But being on antidepressants, if you're not careful you can just be sitting on the couch looking at daytime TV, eating and doing nothing at all."

There's something incredibly sad about 'survivors'. Long -forgotten, their best days behind them, hardly recognizable-to others or themselves. If I ever had the time I'd love to write a book on this theme.

Meantime, must get back to Exley's Fan's Notes. J.C's journals are full of a slow-burning sadness. And you can't but help think of R. Searle's: "Once you're a prisoner, you're always a prisoner".

What I pick put are the most ordinary words or phrases. They seem to mean the most. Like 'steady rain', 'the accrual of many summers', 'her speech thick', 'the curl mysteriously slips out of their hair'.

Some brash young thing wrote in an otherwise fine review: 'this book is about accepting (living with) your "corruption". Perhaps only a young person could say that, could totally miss the point.