Death is like hospitality under the influence, unfunny men attempting to talk pretty when they would’ve been well advised to remain taciturn. Death is also the inability of some people to refer to a pregnant woman without billowing out their hands in vague allusion to her size. Death is not the end, it is a bookmark.
And La petite mort is no post-coital ennui. It is no sigh of escaping life force. It is something considerably more boring than that, without even the promise of an orgasm to help wait out the tide.
It is having a journey home at night disturbed by noticing a young girl getting out of a white van by the side of the road, a known prostitute haunt, and knowing that the driver was so brazen as to leave the hazards on.
It is the anomalocaric stench of the alleys of the city: the piss-stained alcoves that urbane city types smoke in during the day but that function as subaltern bedrooms during the night.
It is the carpal tunnel thoughts that seize and prevent sleep.
Written on Tuesday, 18 October 2011