Magic

I'm hoping to finish The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion tomorrow. I'm enjoying it immensely while also carrying a persistent feeling that I am going to die. Luckily, I am not known for an accurate intuition. When describing the sudden illness that falls her daughter she says:

"...I had always at some level apprehended, because I was born fearful, that some events in life would remain beyond my ability to control or manage them. Some events would just happen. This was one of those events. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."

She also quotes a line from a poem by  Manley Hopkins, "I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day."

Simple and perfect. I am often captured by tragedy, letting it pull me in and whisper its secrets. I try to remember every feeling, every thought, but pain tends to avoid traveling by word. This attraction made me a morose little kid, but it frees me as an adult. I can articulate my feelings a lot better. I can view challenges with better perspective now. Distance, even. I am not altogether cured, but I find I don't really want to be.