In “Earshot,” an episode of Buffy, the high school vampire slayer is infected by a mouthless demon who transfers his telepathic powers to her. This doesn’t allow her to, for instance, wordlessly communicate with friends, a nifty trick in class. Instead, Buffy begins to hear the thoughts of everyone around her, all the time, to the point where her head is filled with a stream of thoughts including very dark ones, emanating from everyone around and, eventually, seemingly, the entire world. The stress of knowing so much about humans ends up corroding her sense of self and she collapses from the pressure, her life ebbing away as her mind collapses. Her mentor Giles says, “She can’t pick one thought out of the din.”
In Turkey, a woman has survived the torrential rains but, as she explains to a reporter, this gives her no comfort. She has seen bodies flow past her in the chaos. Nearby, a dog and her puppies burned alive, and she can still hear the screams in her head. She tells a reporter, “Right now, I cannot be grateful to be alive.”
In White Lotus, Quinn points out that “a billion animals died in Australia during the fires” and asks, “Where does all the pain go?”
When M. died, I was left staring at an M-shaped hole in the world. He was there and then he was not. Could I walk through that hole, as though it were a portal, and enter a dimension where he still existed? I read about his collapse and of the efforts to revive him and I saw the flashing lights of the ambulance. I realise I am making this up. He was in New Orleans and I, I was not. I’m glad B. and I went to see him perform the last time he was here. When we emerged from the theatre, there was snow falling everywhere and it was lovely and magical. He kissed my hand and it surprised me but then all affection always surprises me and I think he knew that, with his wry eyes and that smile.
Every day, in my social feed, which is what most of my “social” life is these days, there is so much death, so much grief, so much mourning and I sometimes think I can take it no longer and that this is bad, this is selfish. But I feel the weight of all the grief. It courses through me. “I am so sorry for your loss,” I write over and over again, sometimes two or three or five or six times in a row in the space of a few minutes. Grief is a ritual I imbibe every morning with my morning coffee. It threatens to become mundane. Can I lie somewhere for days on end, writhing in pain from feeling all the grief swallowing up the world?
L. is dead and I walk around in the open air not to let go of the shock but to feel its weight. Somewhere I pick up a cup of lavender gelato and the rain strikes. I take shelter under a richly decorated stone awning and decide to consume the gelato and it’s fine, a bit too sweet, but fine. The building is pretty, as is the one opposite me and I take some photos.
If a person leaves a hole in the world in their shape, what happens when so many die so often and every day, every hour? What is the shape of the world? I can’t pick my grief out of all the grief.
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For more on grief, listen to this podcast with David Parsons of Nostalgia Trap.
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
Image: Agnes Martin, “Untitled #1” (2003).