Prudence in Hell 022
Grief
The limits of my language are the limits of my world, W said, Why you push against them as they close around you; the ingrown bloom, the inward-turning torture cabinet where walls can be airtight and vacuum-sealed Though of course not all grief takes on the same shape —no, more or less obviously, Not all grief is infinite or has a comet’s periodicity or is as regular as lunar cycles. Every heartbreak a brick through a window I keep raising higher, outside human reach I am courted by gods, for lack of better affordances. A perfect dividend: —You know me by every name I’ve ever had: Shakespeare, Mimesis, Pygmalion. Forces outside most human understanding There is nothing below but the lower Or what I call Real Founder Level This is the way the worm turns This is the way the worm turns With a bang —to the head, preferably, and quickly— we don’t care if there’s a whimper. The cruellest part of The Wasteland which also serves as an initiation to the tarot; the part you may bite but not eat from —the ineffable bullet, like Tantalus. I think a great deal of Kirilov in The Devils, pacing in his room with his cup of tea like Fate’s caged tiger. I think more of Kirilov than Stavrogin, and of the last scene between them, too often. A frequent visitor sometimes reminds me that if I take a bridge as an exit —either one— I will instantly respawn in a time in which I was innocent of grief, and the temptation is to know that Death would not underdeliver, and the date would be March 30, 2021.