Ways to Live a Life

On loss, and how the everyday carries on anyway.

From Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami:

"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us-that's snatched right out of our hands-even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness."

And from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World:

Loss was not a skill, not a measure of a life.

Paths from here

• The Now and the Not Now: time slowing in the flicker of the hospital light