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The heart cannot reason. The brain does that. And if there was one thing I had learned in life, it was that the heart is everything, the brain nothing. That was why everything in life was always so horribly painful.
Why do I organize my life like this? What do I want with this neutrality? Obviously it is to eliminate as much resistance as possible, to make the days slip past as easily and unobtrusively as possible. But why? Isn’t that synonymous with wanting to live as little as possible? With telling life to leave me in peace so that I can … yes, well, what? Read? Oh, but come on, what do I read about, if not life? Write? Same thing. I read and write about life. The only thing I don’t want life for is to live it.
She didn’t say this was what she had feared when Linda and I had got together, but I knew it was the case and thought it strange I had never been afraid of this outcome. I had been sure everything would be fine. My philosophy had been to follow your heart. Not your mind, not rationality, not money, but your heart. My first thought when we got together had been that I wanted to have children with her. Not one, not two, but three. And we had them. When I wrote about us, I had also followed my heart. It was cold then.
The story of last summer that I have just told looks different now, I know, from the way it really was. Why? Because Linda is a human being and her unique essence is indescribable, her own distinctive presence, her nature and her soul, which were always there beside me, which I saw and felt regardless of whatever else was going on. It didn’t reside in what she did, it didn’t reside in what she said, it resided in what she was. It resides in what she is. Leaning over Heidi, whispering something in her ear, Heidi laughing her trilled laugh. Lying on the sofa with Vanja on top, laughing at
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