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09.10.10

our little cat, jude, died a year ago today. his ashes are in a little tin next to my jewelry box in our bedroom closet; i can't imagine where we would scatter them, and sometimes i need to reach in and touch the tin before i go to bed. there are things i called him which will always be only his, but there are others which were only his and now slip out of my mouth when i'm talking to steve (a gregarious, knockabout, impertinent cat, as unlike jude as he could be; the little one was private, sad-eyed, and gentle). while that should be alright or even a good thing, something in my gut dissolves every time it happens. it always comes together again. it always dissolves.

from this week's new yorker, in a collection of notes by roland barthes:

July 29th
Bibliothèque Nationale
    Letter [from Proust] to Georges de Lauris, whose mother has just died (1907).
    "Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power...that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more."