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The gaps
in Susan's life begin in her childhood; then, as now, there are sudden blanks
and reappearances. When she's three or four, her mother becomes ill and she's sent to
live for a while with her uncle who runs a store in Tuscon. Then she's back
with her parents, but they leave Arizona. Her father is roping cattle in
Nebraska now. She grows up moving farther into space, vastness, clear
and lonely air. Today she reads a great deal but she was never properly
educated, and the beautiful intent eyes will turn inward if someone mentions a word
not too recondite, like "recondite".
The cruelty of death lies in
the fact that it brings the real sorrow of the end, but not the end.
The greatest cruelty of
death: an apparent end causes a real sorrow.
The lamentation around the
deathbed is actually a lamentation over the fact that here no dying in the true
sense has taken place. We must still content ourselves with this sort of
dying, we are still playing the game.
Franz
Kafka: The Blue Octavo Notebooks (The Fourth Notebook).
Photographs:
Alvin Langdon Coburn. 1. Kensington Gardens, 1909; 2. On The Embankment, 1909; 3. The Door In The Wall, 1911; 4. The White Cloud, 1911.
Joe South: Games People Play (Link)
