I just finished Kate Atkinson’s book A God in Ruins.
And it made me so lonely.
It was the way the siblings in her book talk among themselves. They’re all well-educated, intelligent people and they constantly, effortlessly refer in conversation to poems, plays, novels, they just reel off lines and phrases, knowing their interlocutor will get the reference.
One character calls her store of such precious fragments her “bag of lovelies”. She brings them out to cheer or comfort herself, to comfort others.
Once I lived that way.
Once I had such a sister.
But now that SHE “wanders in Death’s shade”,
I am become dull and speechless.
It is difficult to find a purpose in post-modern America without one’s mirror, but that is what you need to do. Strive to aim higher even as everything is collapsing around you.
Sometimes that purpose is found only when stumbled into in while navigating through chaos in utter darkness.
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Dear Hypatia, you, too, are a precious gem, to us, and to all who have the joy of encountering you. As Someone we know and love once said: “Take courage, I have overcome the world.”
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