"There are things too strong for even the strongest man."

-- Victor Hugo

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting."

"And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job--where the machine seems to run on much as usual--I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? They say an unhappy man wants distractions--something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he'd rather lie there shivering than get up and find one. It's easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally dirty and disgusting." -- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Why did I not re-read this two years ago? Perhaps it was that tired man wanting a blanket thing. 

I have passed those early stages of it, and have been doing better in many ways. But the truth is that it's not just my daughter that I'm grieving for. And there are setbacks. 

"It is all right to wallow in one's journal; it is a way of getting rid of self-pity and self-indulgence and self-centeredness. What we work out in our journals we don't take out on family and friends."

-- Madeleine L'Engle

Yes, a journal is normally private. But I do it here. Why make my journal public? I don't know, completely. Somehow it just helps. Somehow it makes me feel better. Perhaps because I don't have a living human in my life to actually talk to. This is almost like having someone, and if I wallow and complain, well, whoever reads it is reading it of their own choice, and so I don't feel like I'm inflicting it on them.

And also, and not least importantly, I have some small hope that what I write may be of some help to someone else who may be experiencing, or processing having experienced, some similar grief and heartache. 

Vir sine feminâ bonum non est

 Here's something I never thought I'd do:

Well, two things I didn't expect, really. Yes, that's who you think it is in the pictures. No, we're not back together. We did have a wonderful time, though. 

How I feel, when I look out at the world we find ourselves living in.

Morality and Psychoanalysis by C.S. Lewis Doodle

 Look how beautiful my granddaughters are.

"I'm one of those sad souls who never stops loving people from the past, no matter how long ago or far away."

-- me

I went yesterday, for my birthday, to see the new Wes Anderson film. First time I've gone to the theater in a long while. I love his films, and could give a long list of reasons why, but here's one which I hadn't even realized until this moment, when I saw it in an interview with him (which is printed in a book about his films, which was featured in a documentary about them, which is the perfect way to learn something about them: layer within layer within layer).

"The flesh is at once man's burden and his temptation. He bears it and yields to it. He must keep watch over it and restrain it, and only obey it in the last resort. Such obedience may be a fault, but it is a venial fault. It is a fall, but a fall onto the knees which may end in prayer. To be a saint is to be an exception;  to be a true man is the rule. Err, fail, sin if you must, but be upright. To sin as little as possible is the law for men; to sin not at all is the dream of angels. All earthly things are subject to sin; it is like the force of gravity."

-- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables 

"What is reported of men, whether it be true or false, may play as large a part in their lives, and above all in their destiny, as the things they do." -- Victor Hugo

"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

 -- Isa 43:19

"Nalgron was speaking of courage, of honor, of prudence, of thoughtfulness in giving and punctillio in keeping your word, of following your heart, of setting and unswervingly striving toward a high, romantic goal, of self-honesty in all these things but especially in recognizing your aversions and desires, of the need to close your ears to the fears and naggings of women, yet freely forgive them all their jealousies, attempted trammelings, and even extremest wickednesses, since these all sprang from their ungovernable love."

-- Fritz Leiber

What happened to the world in which things like this were written and published? It wasn't all that long ago, but it seems like another age of the earth. And it's not even great literature; it's pulp fiction. 

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love."

-- Albus Dumbledore 

"Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal."

-- William Penn