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“Perfection in anything,” she said, “is unbearably dull. Myself, I prefer a touch of imperfection.”
And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends us in spite of our desperate determination never to forget.
She was one of those people whose feelings are so intense they become unbearable, unlivable, and her lesson had been a harsh one. For almost twenty-five years she had been crushing emotion out of existence, and she was convinced that in the end persistence would succeed.
“We all have contempt for whatever there’s too many of. Out here it’s sheep, but in the city it’s people.”
Each of us has something within us which won’t be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die.
Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, it’s driven to. We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can’t affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it’s the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don’t you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.”
That’s the purpose of old age, Meggie. To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did.” “Provided senility doesn’t render us incapable first,” said Meggie dryly. “Not that there’s any danger of that in you. Nor in me, I suppose.” “Maybe senility’s a mercy shown to those who couldn’t face retrospection.
The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.
