Would you like a piece of bargain-basement psychology? I got it from the Trafalmadorians, courtesy of Kurt Vonnegut:
Imagine that you're walking down a corridor, walking on a rug. You can't see ahead of you: Walking backwards, or shading your eyes, or whatever. The rug ends - but has it? Or have you simply walked off the end of it? Is it gone? Of course not - you are.
I lost my Dad in 1994. AD 1925 to 1994 is his span - he didn't pass away, I did. Within that span of years, there he is, permanently.*
Naamah, the very town I grew up in has since been bulldozed, "redeveloped" so that the world I knew simply doesn't exist today. My elementary school - I'd have difficulty today pinpointing its exact location. Well, it didn't exist in AD 1706 either - its span is fixed, finite, but enduring.
It doesn't help much - you've still lost all contact - but at least the people, the things, the events you remember haven't really gone away. They're all still there, all the days of their lives like frames of a movie that you watched and enjoyed - and remember.
[N B: This does not preclude the possibility of an afterlife; the 'rug' may have turned off at right angles and be continuing elsewhere.]
*It is the loss of his memories, his experiences and knowledge that I mourn. I would that he could have passed those on to me. - I had the same reaction when Isaac Asimov died: All that education, all that knowledge of so many sciences, simply wasted.
Yeah, well, you know what? I just found a correspondence between us from autumn of last year, wherein I was in a bad jam in a story I was writing, and turned to you for semi-professional advice... and you thought deeply about it, had "a lively discussion" with your husband, and replied with such a lucid, helpful analysis that I saved the whole thing onto my own hard drive. [Which is fortunate, as I then apparently deleted the entry!] You then followed up, appraising my solution and agreeing that it was the best possible for the circumstances. The whole business was so friendly, so intelligent and considerate, that in reading it now I could hear your karma dinging like an old-fashioned service station air-pump.
This is why I occasionally make what clumsy efforts towards insight that I do, offer what constructive consolation I can: I know you'd do the same for me - because you did.
I enjoyed that one, though. It's both ironic and annoying as fucking hell that it's often easier for me to see someone else's work clearly than it is for me to see my own.
I suppose that's why there are always going to be editors.
Would you like a piece of bargain-basement psychology? I got it from the Trafalmadorians, courtesy of Kurt Vonnegut:
Imagine that you're walking down a corridor, walking on a rug. You can't see ahead of you: Walking backwards, or shading your eyes, or whatever. The rug ends - but has it? Or have you simply walked off the end of it? Is it gone? Of course not - you are.
I lost my Dad in 1994. AD 1925 to 1994 is his span - he didn't pass away, I did. Within that span of years, there he is, permanently.*
Naamah, the very town I grew up in has since been bulldozed, "redeveloped" so that the world I knew simply doesn't exist today. My elementary school - I'd have difficulty today pinpointing its exact location. Well, it didn't exist in AD 1706 either - its span is fixed, finite, but enduring.
It doesn't help much - you've still lost all contact - but at least the people, the things, the events you remember haven't really gone away. They're all still there, all the days of their lives like frames of a movie that you watched and enjoyed - and remember.
[N B: This does not preclude the possibility of an afterlife; the 'rug' may have turned off at right angles and be continuing elsewhere.]
*It is the loss of his memories, his experiences and knowledge that I mourn. I would that he could have passed those on to me. - I had the same reaction when Isaac Asimov died: All that education, all that knowledge of so many sciences, simply wasted.
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Yeah, well, you know what? I just found a correspondence between us from autumn of last year, wherein I was in a bad jam in a story I was writing, and turned to you for semi-professional advice... and you thought deeply about it, had "a lively discussion" with your husband, and replied with such a lucid, helpful analysis that I saved the whole thing onto my own hard drive. [Which is fortunate, as I then apparently deleted the entry!] You then followed up, appraising my solution and agreeing that it was the best possible for the circumstances.
The whole business was so friendly, so intelligent and considerate, that in reading it now I could hear your karma dinging like an old-fashioned service station air-pump.
This is why I occasionally make what clumsy efforts towards insight that I do, offer what constructive consolation I can: I know you'd do the same for me - because you did.
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I enjoyed that one, though. It's both ironic and annoying as fucking hell that it's often easier for me to see someone else's work clearly than it is for me to see my own.
I suppose that's why there are always going to be editors.
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