Moments of Reprieve

I am being made to suffer for things I did not even do.

There is an element of despair in his voice. Without seeing his face I cannot place it though. Behind it is the thought: how much blacker must things become. The mongol says that he's just being his usual 'drama queen' self and not to take him seriously. This is a fantastic way of brushing off other people's-and one's own-problems but it just doesn't stick.

Is there a suffering that would make sense, and can there ever be just the right amount of suffering in the world, I ask Mongol. We can never just accept it as our fate, as something beyond the horizons of our understanding or our control;
to say that it is out of our hands now is to resign oneself to the unthinkable...

"Is this not another form of evasion?" he replies. As if thought about pain could lessen it any, as if looking at something from a distance was not looking at all. Is pain one or is it two? Questions are never answers, are they?

In a conversation with C, we wonder if anyone has written convincingly about death ...whether anyone can do so. I'm sure she'll come up with something. Khayyam doesn't work. Better to get drunk than read about it.

Finally, the stark winter days are upon us. The sun has refused ascendancy and is tired by mid-morning, lightly skimming all that it touches with its gentle spirit, never inhering in anything, unable to unite anything. The underground arteries of the world congeal, matter knots itself together, minerals age in the veins of our blood.

But before the light closes in on itself, there is a sudden flickering of sunshine on the rust leaves and they glimmer and dance for a moment; bathed in this moment of bliss they undergo some inner transformation. And then it is gone. And the darkness takes over. But there are such moments...