Simone Weil 21

The union of contradictories involves a wrenching apart. I felt sadness at the loss of sadness. You have inherited this. In some origins we nearly find our end. Strange ambition, this, to see the world as is. To hear Manoa's escaped parrots as treetop chatterers, “fathers of all speech.” I remember long walks and robins and stray cats and the small wooden house I lived in later and failure to sleep and above all I remember adrenaline. You will sleep for several days after you start this medication. They didn't say I'd watch students on the bus lean to tie their shoes and think “they are tying their shoes.” My student reads Tender Buttons as the story of her dying father and the hand her grandmother extended then took away. There is no outside to sadness. It doesn't send postcards from foreign capitols, but brings them into your bed. I took out a TRO and left the state. The divorce came later.