Status Updates From The Hours

‘She might, at this moment, be nothing but a floating intelligence; not even a brain inside a skull, just a presence that perceives, as a ghost might. Yes, she thinks, this is probably how it must feel to be a ghost. It’s a little like reading, isn’t it—that same sensation of knowing people, settings, situations, without playing any particular part beyond that of the willing observer.’

“But there are still the hours, aren’t there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there’s another.”

80

‘She thinks of how much more space a being occupies in life than it does in death; how much illusion of size is contained in gestures and movements, in breathing. Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.’

‘Clarissa, she thinks, is not the bride of death after all. Clarissa is the bed in which the bride is laid.’

‘There is still that singular perfection, and it’s perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.’