The Physics of Sorrow

by Georgi Gospodinov

There’s an order to things, my child, first I’ll die, then your grandma and your grandpa, then . . . And this made me bawl all the harder. A consolation built on a chain of deaths.

It’s clear that Time always devours his children. But there is time where there is light, where lightness and darkness, day and night alternate. So it turns out that the only place hidden from time is the absolute darkness of the cave. That’s where the child Zeus was hidden away. It was the only place where Chronos (Time) did not rule.

In stories, especially those told by loved ones, there was always some blind spot, a momentary gap, a weak point, incomprehensible sorrow, longing for something lost or that had never taken place, which pulled me inside, into the dark galleries of the unspoken. There were such secret galleries and corridors in every story.

Sometimes—at the same time—I am a dinosaur, a fish, a bat, a bird, a single-celled organism swimming in the primordial soup, or the embryo of a mammal, sometimes I’m in a cave, sometimes in a womb, which is basically the same thing—a place protected (against time).

The connection between shared emotional experiences and mirror neurons has not been well studied; experiments are in the works. Researchers believe that the conscious cultivation of empathy, including through the reading of novels (see S. Keen), will make communication far easier and will save us from future world cataclysms.

The only thing I had was Laika, the dog, whose homeless soul was howling through the cosmos.

Batman, Spider-Man, and the Ninja Turtles have managed to get the upper hand over the Indians and their whole mythology, dishonestly at that, never once going directly into battle against them. They finished up what the pale faces had begun two centuries ago.

DEATH IS A CHERRY TREE THAT RIPENS WITHOUT US

If you put some effort into appearing normal, you can save yourself a lot of time, during which you can be what you want to be in peace.

Usually stories are told by the one in the weaker position. This is clearest with Scheherazade.

Revoltingly lonely. That’s how I had been feeling over the last few years, that’s the most precise definition. A while back I saw it written in black marker on a telephone booth: “I love people and that makes me revoltingly lonely.” I added it to the collection of persistent phrases that I run through my head during fits of . . . revolting loneliness.

have a phobia of a certain question. A nightmarish question that can literally jump out at you from around the corner, hidden in the toothless mouth of the neighbor lady or mumbled by the clerk at the newspaper stand. Every telephone call is charged with this question. Yes, it most often lurks in telephone receivers: How are you?