 | Sad afternoon. Shopping. Purchase (frivolity) of a tea cake at the bakery. Taking care of the customer ahead of me, the girl behind the counter says Voilà. The expression I used when I brought maman something, when I was taking care of her. Once, toward the end, half-conscious, she repeated faintly, Voilà (“I’m here,” a word we used with each other all our lives). The word spoken by the girl at the bakery brought tears to my eyes. I kept on crying quite a while back in the silent apartment. That’s how I can grasp my mourning. Not directly in solitude, empirically, etc.; I seem to have a kind of ease, of control that makes people think I’m suffering less than they would have imagined. But it comes over me when our love for each other is torn apart again. The most painful point at the most abstract moment… |
The excerpt above was translated from French by Richard Howard and published in the latest edition of The New Yorker (September 13, 2010, p. 27).
• Sep 12, 2010 link notes tagged: art life death mother author Barthes mourning abstraction suffering lost pain Kalo
