The snow is melting quickly, leaving behind a scene like the bleary-eyed aftermath of a really good party.
Sunset: 6:18pm. A high of 70 degrees and 84% humidity. Spent a late night at the cemetery chapel, tending to the responses to After the End.
Sunset: 6:30pm. Moon: New. My father would have turned 73 today.
If I’ve gleaned anything from keeping this glum journal throughout this year, it’s that I keep returning to the language of grief.
There’s a problem with modern grief, a rupture that cannot be filled with squishy words like mindfulness and acceptance.
Tonight I sat outside in the unfamiliar terrain of southeastern Ohio, lit a candle, and watched the stars.
An empathy machine sounds like a pretty good leader right now.
Sometimes I dream about tollbooth operators, the half-glimpsed faces with cigarettes on their lips, their left hands forever clutching a quarter and a dime in change.
Sometimes I find comfort in a two-thousand-year-old myth about a Chinese emperor.
I find solace in these instructions from Epictetus: do not say something is lost, only that it is returned.
People keep talking about a return to “normal,” as if there’s such a thing.
I stared at the empty cabins along the shore, half-wondering if I was still dreaming about my father.
Grief can arrive on a gust of wind, a glimpse at a calendar, or a half-heard snippet of conversation on the street.
“I often wonder why people torment themselves as soon as they can.”
