Happy new year

 

Tonight, two weeks in advance of everyone else, 2008 ended for us.

How far we came in this year. Whatever happens, we’ll never move so far again.

If I could do that year all over, here’s what I’d change:

I would kiss you more. The chances were there, that I did not take. And I could have created some chances more. So many times I could have kissed you, but didn’t. And now the year is at an end.

I would have given you beautiful things. I didn’t have a whole year. I only started in October. Then, those earrings. Tonight, that necklace.

Once, we talked about gift-giving, and I mentioned jewellery, and you told me how D could never get it – how did I put it? That a woman could never have enough beautiful stuff.

From that moment on I vowed to give you only beautiful stuff, as often as could be. I know you were happy with the earrings. I knew how happy you would be with the necklace.

One day soon, probably next year, in about June or so, you’ll go. You’ll move on forever. You won’t be here any more.

We are not lovers. We can never be lovers. I knew that all along. Nevertheless, as I type these words, I am almost doubled over with weeping. I’ll calm down in order to go on typing, but it won’t go away.

I want you to have some beautiful stuff to take with you, so that I can stay with you, in some way. Yes, I know you’ll never forget me. I know what happens to the people we “never forget”.

Given the feeble nature of memory, I reckon beautiful stuff is more reliable. And you look more beautiful wearing it.

The Frontal Cortex : I See Dead People

 

The Frontal Cortex : I See Dead People

Mind Hacks: The dead stay with us

Scientific American Mind Matter's blog has just published an article I wrote on grief hallucinations, the remarkably common experience of seeing, hearing, touching or sensing our loved ones after they've passed away.

Grief hallucinations are a normal reaction to having someone close to you die and are a common part of the mourning process, but it's remarkable how often people are embarrassed to say they've had the experience because they worry what others might think.

I was inspired to write the piece after reading a wonderful paper, published in Transcultural Psychiatry, by psychiatrist Carlos Sluzki on the cultural significance of one Hispanic lady's post-grief hallucinations.

My reference to the shadow cat draws on the intro to Sluzki's article which must be one of the most beautiful openings to an academic article I've ever read.

Mind Hacks: The dead stay with us

Apple

Image by *brilho-de-conta via Flickr

Last night she embraced another man. Yes, I know continentals do that, but this was a little too enthusiastic on his part, at least.

And so I awoke at 5 am, jealousy gnawing at my insides, unable to fall asleep again. Some things never change.

There’s nothing to it, but a jealous man doesn’t care about that. She thinks I’m a saint and a superhero, but the darkness is lurking. There’s a worm in the centre of the apple.

In dreams I walk with you

Last night, in a dream, you kissed me. I was aiming for the cheek, and you turned your head. As always, the torrent of emotion made me wake up. It’s too bad that all these things can only happen in my dreams, Roy Orbison sings.

On the outside, I appear to be making progress. I no longer bitch and whine, “Oh, I have to see you, you must see me, I miss you, come on waaah waaah” and so on.

But inside, the longing for you is as strong as ever it was. And in the night, it overflows.

Dream

Image by ___federico___ via Flickr

One day I’m going to wake up and find that it was all a dream. That does seem the most likely explanation.

But will I be panting, sweat-soaked, relieved to escape the nightmare? Or will I shed tears in the darkness, grasping at a dream that can never be recaptured?

Which of those two endings sounds the better?

Heartbreak

Image by moominsean via Flickr

I think tonight my heart actually broke. I can’t describe it any other way.

I’ve been telling you all along, full of conviction: we can never be lovers.

Tonight, I now realise for the first time, I truly believed it. Something made me realise it is actually true. And I became aware that I have been paying lip-service to the idea all along. I’ve been entertaining notions of success. Tonight I saw with perfect clarity: it’s not ever going to happen.

I suppose the realisation is analogous to hearing that a loved one has died. I sat here and cried like a baby. I’m about ready to go off again just thinking about typing that admission. I’m feeling washed-out, literally. Sluiced, hosed, laved. Gotta say: it can’t have helped that I was listening to Emmylou Harris at the time.

So that’s it. The dream is over, and not even stubborn naive delusion can bring it back. Now all I have to do is figure out what to do about still being in love with you. I wonder what Emmylou has to say about that.

Sentence

Every time I have to let you go,
I know there's no God;
Or if there is, he's capricious, and laughs at me.
Dude, I know I did some bad stuff.
But haven't I paid for it by now?
Not quite, not just yet, comes the reply.
Patience, says the voice.
Just one more eternity,
And then you're off the hook.

Have a little faith.

Ay waukin O

 

Ay Waukin, O

Robert Burns

1.
Summer's a pleasant time:
Flowers of every colour,
The water runs owre the heugh,
And I long for my true lover.

Chorus

Ay waukin , O,
Waukin still and weary:
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my dearie.

2.

When I sleep I dream,
When I wauk I'm eerie,
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my dearie.

Chorus

3.

Lanely night comes on,
A' the lave are sleepin,
I think on my bonnie lad,
And I bleer my een wi' greetin.

Chorus

Ay = always, ever

Waukin = waking, awake

Heugh = hollow

Nane = none

Lanely = lonely

Lave = the others

Bleer = blur

Greetin = weeping

Back to Earth

Melancholy is knowing the pain that love brings, and doing it anyway.

Willie Nelson is the world’s foremost troubador of falling in love again, despite what it did to you last time, and the time before.

In Back to Earth, he achieves a little bit of insight. He realises that he’s been here before, only last time he was the disappointment, and his Beloved was the victim.

The song is addressed to an old love, who’s been through with him what he’s going through now. It’s nice to think she’s still there for him to confess to, although she may just as easily not be. Which of us hasn’t addressed our thoughts on love to someone who is no longer listening?

The words are by Willie, but since I’m not a great fan of Willie’s singing, I’ve chosen to include a video of the song as sung by my old friend Eddi Reader. First the words:

Back to Earth

I guess my heart
Just settled back to Earth
I rode a dream so wild and free
For all that dream was worth
But true love
Can be a blessing and a curse
I guess my heart
Just settled back to Earth
And now I know just how
You felt so long ago
When the dream for you had ended
And you let me know
So I rode from sky to sky
Tryin' to keep the dream alive
But everything
I did just made it worse
I guess my heart
Just settled back to Earth
Love created songs
That I still sing
Love we knew
Still makes the rafters ring
Tonight I'll sing
For everything I'm worth
For all the hearts
That settle back to Earth
Love created songs
That I still sing
Love we knew
Still makes the rafters ring
Tonight I'll sing
For everything I'm worth
For all the hearts
That settle back to Earth
Our song will never have
A final verse
Our hearts just finally
Settled back to Earth

That line:

Our love will never have a final verse

is the essence of melancholy: sorrow plus resignation.

Here’s Eddi Reader singing it, (no embedding, sadly) and if anyone thinks a lassie frae Glasgow can’t sing country, check this out. Country was our folk music. It speaks to white trash everywhere, whatever the continent.

And we fall in love too.

Drenching

Image by .mands. via Flickr

Same as the fact of my own death, my love for you is always with me.
But after the initial intensity of discovery, the knowledge recedes.
Periodically it cycles up and gives me a drenching. "Oh!" I say. "This is what it's like. Yes. How could I have forgotten?" But soon I fail
to remember yet again. Life intervenes: it needs to stay separate from love, and death, while simultaneously requiring both.

But unlike love, which often ends, death is steadfast. "Hullo," it says cheerily one day. "I have not forgotten you."

"Anna Louise"

Honesty

Image via Wikipedia

The phone conversation that hasn’t happened yet:

- I guess I dropped the bomb on you, huh.

- You can say that again.

- I thought it was time to be honest. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.

- I appreciate your honesty.

- Good.

- But

- But what?

- I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do about this. I wish you hadn’t said anything.

Lovers talk as if they believed others were listening in. Their conversations cannot be deciphered unless you’re the Lover, or the Beloved. And even they miss half of what’s going on.

The email referred to:

It's funny that you got all shocked when I flippantly asked, "What are you wearing?" It was out-of-character, and it was is inappropriate.

We're not lovers, and no matter how good friends we ever become, we can never be lovers. I once dreamed I was kissing you, and it was so vividly real it woke me with the force of the feeling. Yet even in my dreams I couldn't go further than that. No matter how much my heart is in love with you, my head reminds me: we can never be lovers.

That's one of the saddest thoughts I've ever had to express. The tears are on my face now, even though I've known it all along. It's not what you need from me, and it never will be. You need to find happiness, and if there's anything I can do to make life more cheerful for you in the meantime, that's what I'm there for.

But not for that.

The comment that kicked it all off:

 

BEGIN

(23:47:52) b...@gmail.com you there

(23:48:08) n...@gmail.com no!

(23:48:10) n...@gmail.com :-)

(23:48:16) n...@gmail.com hi

(23:48:18) b...@gmail.com i can see you

(23:48:29) n...@gmail.com peek-a-boo

(23:48:52) b...@gmail.com what are you wearing? (nerd)

(23:49:18) n...@gmail.com fully dressed. why? (you really are!)

(23:49:45) b...@gmail.com i really am what? a nerd?

(23:49:56) n...@gmail.com a nerd, yes.

(23:50:03) b...@gmail.com no way

(23:50:10) n...@gmail.com for asking things of this sort.

(23:50:17) b...@gmail.com nerds don't go out with beautiful women

(23:50:21) n...@gmail.com yes way

(23:51:13) n...@gmail.com ... ohh. -- so?

(23:51:55) b...@gmail.com i'm a renaissance man, not a nerd

(23:52:10) b...@gmail.com i guess that smiley didn't turn out right

(23:52:31) n...@gmail.com I see. - Ren. men are vulgar, then?

(23:52:43) b...@gmail.com was it so vulgar?

(23:53:14) n...@gmail.com nooo, but a bit. Unexpected at any rate.

(23:53:27) b...@gmail.com i was playing off the "I can see you" comment.

(23:53:42) b...@gmail.com I get a notification when any of my contacts comes online

(23:53:47) b...@gmail.com i can't really see you

(23:53:55) n...@gmail.com !!!! ohhhh! --- I didn't get that.

(23:54:07) n...@gmail.com then it's not vulgar, really.

(23:54:14) b...@gmail.com i wouldn't mind being able to see you

(23:54:28) b...@gmail.com but a gentleman would be obliged to let you know in advance

(23:54:36) n...@gmail.com :-)) that's not always practical.

(23:54:54) b...@gmail.com maybe i could get a notification about that as well

(23:55:00) n...@gmail.com a quick rise from nerd to gentleman, then!

(23:55:04) n...@gmail.com :-))

(23:55:22) b...@gmail.com i'm always a perfect gentleman, aside from the confusion about doors

(23:55:27) b...@gmail.com going in and coming out

(23:55:43) n...@gmail.com :-)) and steps going up and down

(23:55:49) b...@gmail.com it's a minefield

(23:56:17) b...@gmail.com sometimes i get so scared of committing a faux pas i can hardly take a step

(23:57:31) b...@gmail.com anyway it's been nice chatting, but i said i was going to bed, and i like to think i'm a man of my word

(23:57:56) n...@gmail.com ohh. under all circumstances.

(23:58:17) b...@gmail.com here's a kiss for you, on the end of your nose: x

(23:58:25) n...@gmail.com anyway, you are not a nerd, I won't have you insulting my friends!!!

(23:58:58) n...@gmail.com :-) thanks for the kiss on nose. And a big hug back to you! -- sleep well!

(00:01:05) n...@gmail.com xx

(00:01:14) b...@gmail.com xx

END

So you see how easily things can escalate.

Lost on the way

"Say say my playmate
Won't you lay hands on me
Mirror my malady
Transfer my tragedy

When it comes, it's in a wave. You cannot hide. No mantras will dispel it. Like an old friend, you say, I haven't seen you in a while."

Zen is speaking here of his melancholy, or depression, if you prefer. Later in the post, he makes another observation, which returns to the idea of exile:

I feel like I will never sit in my walled garden, with bees in my pear tree. I will not grieve for what I should have had, or could have had. I will grieve only for the tousle-haired boy who ran on Hayle beach, the wind in his hair, salt in his eyes, free, because he got lost in this world, and once you are lost, it seems, there is no way home.

yeah whatever: Lost on the way

The triple fool

 

THE TRIPLE FOOL.
by John Donne

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry ;
But where's that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny ?
Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain ;
And, by delighting many, frees again 
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when 'tis read.
Both are increasèd by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

 

Donne thinks there’s what we would call a therapeutic advantage in forming his melancholy into verse in order to restrain it. I wonder if he really believed that.

The advantage is lost, however, he says, when someone else comes along and turns his verse into a song, which I suppose often happened. Because the people listening are pleased by the songs, Donne says, the chains which held the pain and grief in check are removed, and they’re once more free to wreak their harm.

The latter claim is certainly true, you have to admit: a song multiplies with music the melancholy of its lyrics alone. A sad song does publish the pain and grief of the one who wrote it. That is what attracts us to them in the first place.

Love is sadistic

I’ll be sitting doing something distracting, designed to take my mind off you for a few minutes, when all of a sudden I can smell your skin, and I feel as if all the breath has been sucked out of me. This can happen at any moment.

Love is sadistic, and tortures you like this even though there’s no possible gain.

Point of departure

Image via Wikipedia

Railway Station. Point of arrival. Point of departure. A transit zone. How light she looked, with just a suitcase she could carry in one hand. Inside that suitcase was a marriage, America, a life of which I knew nothing. Inside that suitcase were doors I had never opened into rooms I wouldn’t recognise. The suitcase was stuffed with letters and an address book and a store card for a shopping mall, and dinner parties I had never been to, and wouldn’t go to now. In that suitcase were invitations from friends and pre-sets on a car radio tuned to stations I had never heard. In that suitcase were bad dreams and secret hopes. The dirty linen was in a special nylon compartment. Her childhood was in there - the awkward child with rough plaits who grew into a beautiful heavy-haired woman, who never quite believed the compliments of the mirror. Her husband was in there, or maybe he was strapped to the side, where you usually keep the lifeboats.

I looked at the suitcase, suddenly heavy, too heavy to carry, and I realised that she could never drag it with her. She was right - it would have to be let go, or taken home and unpacked again.

from The Power Book, by Jeanette Winterson

One of the aspects of the Lover’s plight that’s rarely touched upon is retrospective jealousy, in which he begrudges the Beloved everything and everyone that ever happened to her Before She Met Me – the title of a novel by Julian Barnes on this subject which turned out to be a better idea than it was a book.

Every minute you’re away from me makes me feel robbed, and that includes all the minutes before we knew each other. I’m jealous of the whole world. If I can’t have you, no-one can.

 

Washing a shirt

Image via Wikipedia

 

From the pain of lost love and the pain of exile, to the pain of bereavement, which is considered the summum of all losses, an idea I think debatable. It’s no more permanent that losing a love; no more complete than losing one’s homeland. And unlike those two, when a person dies, we don’t have to suffer the additional pain of knowing they exist somewhere, and are prospering without us.

The poem is by Anna Swirszczynska (1909-1984), who has been translated by Jo Govaerts, about whom I spoke yesterday. I took Jo’s translation into Dutch, and translated it in turn into English. Don’t panic, it’s how a lot of translation is done.

The poem not only penetrates right to the heart of what missing a loved one comes down to (a fugitive odour), it also acts as a counterpoint to the usual view that a man may live on in his works. Not, it appears, for everyone.

Stupidly, I never thought to see if an English translation already existed, which it does, here, by the distinguished poet and translator Czeslaw Milosz (with Leonard Nathan).

Sorry, but I think my version is better, for a couple of reasons. You may not agree.

I’m washing a shirt

For the last time, I’m washing the shirt
of my dead father.
The shirt smells of sweat. I remember
that sweat from when I was a child;
all those years
I washed his shirts and underwear
and dried them
on the iron stove in his studio.
He put them on unironed.

Of all the bodies in all the world,
of animals and men,
only one gives off this sweat.
I breathe it in
for the last time. By washing this shirt
I’m destroying it
for good.

Now
all that remains of him are his paintings,
which smell of paint.

Anna Swirszczynska (1909 - 1984)

 

 

The death of love

Only two things cure the melancholy of love.

One is when love dies.

Night’s horizon

Image by john curley via Flickr

I’m alone in the house, looking across the vast empty expanse of the day to night’s horizon. I’m resisting the urge to call you, or send you an email, an SMS.

This is how it will be when everything ends for us, or when you leave – whichever is the sooner. I may as well get used to it now.

Beim schlafengehen | On going to sleep

The third of the four so-called Last Songs by Richard Strauss (not to be confused with the Strausses of Vienna), this is a setting of words by Hermann Hesse, and quite possibly the most beautiful song ever written. The words, which I’ve translated below with the help of Google, speak of falling asleep, but they are also about dying. Strauss wrote the Four Last Songs in 1948, when he was 84. He died in 1949.

The video is one of several available, and features Lucia Popp.

 

Nun der Tag mich müd' gemacht,
soll mein sehnliches Verlangen
freundlich die gestirnte Nacht
wie ein müdes Kind empfangen.
Hände, laßt von allem Tun,
Stirn, vergiß du alles Denken,
alle meine Sinne nun
Wollen sich in Schlummer senken.
Und die Seele unbewacht,
Will in freien Flügen schweben,
Um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
tief und tausendfach zu leben.

 

On going to sleep

Now the day has wearied me
My eager desire is to be received,
Welcomed by the starry night
like a tired child.
Hands, leave everything;
Mind, forget all thought.
All my senses now wish
Is to sink into slumber.
And the unfettered soul,
Floats in free flight,
To live deeper, a thousand-fold
In the magic circle of the night.

Stripped bare

Image by ____federico____ via Flickr

Falling in love is like having your skin stripped off, so you feel everything many times more intensely. Not always in a good way.

I had believed that at my age, after at least ten years of no love, that my skin had grown over, a hard, horny plate which no sensation could penetrate. Then you came, and picked the scab right off the wound, then held a flame to it. I’m feeling now, all right.

Love is pain, and melancholy is the longing to have the wound stripped bare.

Simple observation

Melancholy is sorrow you have to accept.

We can never be lovers.

Goodbye kiss

Image via Wikipedia

When I was a child, I fell in love as a child.

But when I became a man, I put away childish things, though I never stopped falling in love. Now the time is shorter between falling in love, and realising it’s over, and cannot be saved. Now I see through a glass, clearly.

At the beginning of David Copperfield, we read, of his mother:

Can I say of her face – altered as I have reason to remember it, perished as I know it is – that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a crowded street?

Later:

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my mother ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which she lifted up her face to mine, and did so.

When I had read that, under the impression that David's mother was about to die before he could see her again, I slept and dreamed I kissed you, and no dream-kiss has ever been more vivid. So intense was that kiss that it awoke me, and I knew immediately that Clara's kisses for David had inspired the dream. And I knew immediately that this could never happen in life, just as David was never to kiss his mother again.

I was wrong about the second part, but not about the first.

Melancholy is sadness you have to accept. David's mother does eventually die. You're still here, yet you seem more far away than she does.

Love's Deity

I LONG to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the god of love was born.
I cannot think that he, who then loved most,
Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produced a destiny,
And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be,
I must love her that loves not me.

from Love's Deity, by John Donne

The rest is here.

The ubiquity of the Beloved

Image by vdbdc via FlickrThe Lover sees the Beloved everywhere. His journey in the morning can now be defined as From: where she used to live, To: where she will live from now on.

I was missing you on Friday, and knew I would miss you all weekend. Walking in the neighbourhood, I thought I might bump into you. But that would only solve today's problem. What would it take to cure tomorrow's ill? And the day after tomorrow?

The Lover sees the Beloved everywhere, though for him she is nowhere. For him she is always elsewhere.

Fare thee weel my best and dearest

Image via Wikipedia

 

Separation from the Beloved is a form of exile, from the one rather than the many. The Solitary Goose is still surrounded by the flock, but still its solitude is complete.

Ae Fond Kiss was written in response to the exile of the Beloved, which in that case, and in those days in general, may be assumed to be forever. It raises another question of time: the fact that it moves in only one direction:

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met - or never parted --
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

The sorrow is a direct consequence of the love. The two are inseparable. If the Beloved does not leave now, she will leave later. Or the Lover will leave her. The greatest exile is death, and every separation is a small death.

 

One fond kiss

 

Gordon from Glasgow posted Burns’ Ae Fond Kiss in January 2007, and when he was asked for a translation, came up with the goods:

Ae Fond Kiss

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae farewell, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy:
Naething could resist my Nancy!
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met - or never parted --
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare-thee-weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure!

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae farewell, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

gordon said... OK just for you.

One Fond Kiss

One fond kiss, and then we sever!
One farewell, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I will pledge you,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, no cheerful twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around overtakes me.

I will never blame my partial fancy:
Nothing could resist my Nancy!
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever.

Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,
Never met - or never parted -
We had never been broken-hearted.

Fare-you-well, you first and fairest!
Fare-you-well, you best and dearest!
Yours be every joy and treasure,
Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure!

One fond kiss, and then we sever!
One farewell, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I will pledge you,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Ranting'n'Raving: A man's a man for a' that

Grapes 2.0: Time's wingèd chariot

Image via Wikipedia

I decided to come back over here after posting this to my main blog:

I came in from work to an empty house, and fell asleep -- bad idea -- on the couch. Woke up with a sense of melancholy, as after a crying dream. The other day you spoke about going away, and now I felt that the time was already upon us. The world stretches out in front of the young, to the far horizon. Time telescopes as you get older, and every future falls within reach. It doesn't matter how long it's going to be, in my eyes it's already here. Andrew Marvell, in his marvellous poem To His Coy Mistress, writes:

But at my back I always hear

Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near

Read the rest of it here.

Link

Update:

Sleep didn’t come, partly because I’d slept in the evening.

When I was a child I was afraid to fall asleep, because I suffered from nose-bleeds. I’d wake up in the morning with the metallic taste of money in my mouth, and one eye glued shut because of the blood that had pooled in the hollow of my pillow. Naturally, that’s a traumatic experience for a child, and even when it becomes habitual, you still know that’s the essence of your living being that’s been leaking out of you. You still have to be cleaned up by your mother. You still go around for the rest of the day with the smell and taste of your own blood. That’s something that’s normally only associated with major trauma.

Now the fear of sleep is not the fear of blood, it’s the fear of thought. Last night, as you can see, I was preoccupied with the loss of a loved one. In this case, the future loss of a loved one. My point was, future or present makes no difference: a loss once dreamed of becomes actual. At a certain stage of life all time becomes contemporaneous, and the future and present cannot be distinguished. It’s enough that a loss be possible, for it to become actual.

In the minutes and hours between lying down and sleep coming, there’s time to think about all of that. As such, it’s something to be avoided. It’s enough that things should be so, without our seeking to contemplate them as well. Knowing a thing, and thinking about it, is a compounding of the injury.

The solution would be to go to bed only when one is so exhausted that all dread night-time thoughts are impossible. I haven’t yet found the recipe for that potion. All suggestions gratefully welcomed.

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• Time's wingèd chariot

The Solitary Goose

The solitary goose does not drink or eat,
It flies about and calls, missing the flock.
No-one now remembers this one shadow,
They've lost each other in the myriad layers of cloud.
It looks into the distance: seems to see,
It's so distressed, it thinks that it can hear.
Unconsciously, the wild ducks start to call,
Cries of birds are everywhere confused.

The Solitary Goose

A poem by the Chinese poet Tu Fu (712-770), considered one of the two greatest Chinese poets ever. The goose, we’re told, represents autumn. The poem, however, is about exile. It was written as Tu Fu journeyed back to his birthplace, a journey that started in 765 and was never completed.