Status Updates From Departure(s)

When first thinking seriously about death, I came up with an image for it: not as something that awaits us, a terminus at the end of a journey, an arrival from which there will be no further departure. Rather, I thought of it as always being there, on a set of parallel tracks alongside my life.

Neither happiness nor misery are controllable. Joyfulness, pleasure, passionate interest - like their photographic negatives, sadness, grief, and boredom - flow over us in waves.