In the kitchen the pans clang like gongs in the wind where they hang, as if this were a monastery high up in Tibet, and I’ve been thinking about death. I said to my ManPerson, remember this will be the last thing you feel before you die as we talked on the subject of trauma. I meant his body, the sensations of it, that which is with us all the time until the plug is pulled, and as I said it two things struck me. Firstly that I quite fancied a high-five for profundity, and secondly that I’d never thought the thought before. The conversation swept on, I didn’t get the chance to dwell on either, so let’s go back to it here. This will be the last thing I feel before I die, the sensations of this body I inhabit. Not only its sore back from playing tennis and foggy head from afternoon snooze but also the sensations of love and craving, loss and hunger, the actual things I feel now, translated into then but still the same. A whole heap of feelings then nothing. It’s that bit that makes me stop and dig, that to be alive is to be tingling all the time, that I am made of nerve endings and these constant pings will be the last messages I receive. I have, instead of almost no information, almost all of it, everything but the leap, the what happens when the lights go off here and come on somewhere else. It brings death nearer, this thought, closer, as if up till now I’d imagined it like one does a holiday; perfect, just one person missing. But this is how death will feel, exactly like now only older. The desk pressing into the back of my forearms. The cushion pressing into my legs. My glasses indenting my nose, my bare feet on tiled floor. My jaw nudging its way to tense, a slight headache elbowing in. A loss and swell in my chest for my son who’s going away. An ambition and gnawing for a novel that’s with my agent, a worry that I won’t achieve what means so much to me. A regret that I shouted when my children were young and just children and I should have known better. A love so big and enormous for this life it can cloud me and crowd me out. And then I’ll be gone. And the pans will clang in the kitchen where they hang in the breeze like a monastery in Tibet.
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I am so impressed by your ability to cram so much thoughtful meaning into so few words. It really impressive.
"In the kitchen the pans clang like gongs in the wind where they hang . . .." And then again at the end. That's nice.