Sublime

A book that sells one million copies in a year in the United States is a runaway bestseller—that 99 percent of the country didn’t buy. If ten million U.S. households watch a new show, it’s a smash hit—that 90 percent of households never saw. If fifty million people buy a ticket to see a film, it’s the year’s biggest blockbuster—which more than 80 p

newsworthiness rarely brings destroyed White bodies to the front page of the newspaper.

But I was stridently noncommittal to them. I always left myself an out, an escape hatch in case someone offered me a new adventure, the adventure I thought I deserved. I looked forward to a time when I would be the finished article, my sense of the world innate and effortless, with no evidence that there had been any rough drafts.

The allure all these years had been the possibility of the asymptote’s line one day meeting the curve. At first this realization that I could never force a connection seemed tragic; then it became comforting to imagine that the line and the curve could go on forever. They move in the same direction, even if they never touch.

Maybe taking seriously the ideas of our departed friends represents the ultimate expression of friendship, signaling the possibility of a eulogy that doesn’t simply focus attention back on the survivor and their grief.

Writing offered a way to live outside the present, skipping over its textures and slowness, converting the present into language, thinking about language rather than being present at all.