The Sheltering Sky

Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It is that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps 4 or 5 more times. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise. Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless. 

Comments