Sublime

But what to do, where to, next? To be a New Yorker is one thing, but to decide consciously to stay, to live out one’s life here? That’s another. I wasn’t sure I had what it takes.

Arendt wrestled with the tension she felt between who she really was and how others perceived her

One. Two. Three. Four. All in one fell swoop. We no longer believed there wouldn’t be five. Or six, or all. Loss is not spread equally. I have learned that lesson well. It is a lumpy porridge and a thin gruel, and fate does not consider the suffering of a mother and say, Perhaps I’ll spare her this time. There were many times in our season of death

If the same resources have to be shared among more people, some of them at least should end up with less. If children do not suffer, who does? One possible answer is the mother.

(What about Hannah? They set up her nursery in the bedroom in the attic, where things that were not wanted were kept, and even when she got older, now and then each of them would forget, fleetingly, that she existed—as when Marilyn, laying four plates for dinner one night, did not realize her omission until Hannah reached the table. Hannah, as if s

“Knock it off, Harris. You’re not the only skeptic here. It’s hard for everyone,” someone said. The young man, Harris, lifted his teary eyes and said, “I know skepticism is just a way to comfort myself, but I wanted to live out my life in comfort. God, now I’m not even lucky enough for that.” Silence returned.

She struggles to believe that Piers is as real as she is—as full of thoughts and memories and feelings.

but on the other hand, isn’t that reality? Won’t most of us die in fairly unclimactic ways, our passing unremarked by almost everyone, our deaths becoming plot points in the narratives of the people around us?