6.06

 6.06 

Writing, Philip Roth is right, is always a lie. It puts in order what has none; or it changes the order of things that said they wanted to be in a row. It fills in gaps that we once fell through, so that we can come through to an imagined end, when for us there is no end but death or paralysis, which comes abruptly.

Six years and seven days ago, Maureen Mastick, from whom Roz bought our house, died. It was a Monday, like today. End of story, except for the ragged arrangements made for her burial that Wednesday. The purpose of burial services, besides consolation, is to tie up loose ends. But Maureen's loose ends were Maureen's, no one else's. And she was dead and gone; she was absent from the dénouement, from the French for "untie," so originally the untying of a plot, not the tying up of loose ends.

On the day between her death and her burial, a train running blithely along the track from Mals to Merano crashed between Latsch and Kastelbell-Tchars when it ran into a landslide, the mud falling at the moment the train was passing. Nine people were killed; the stories they were telling themselves – constantly doubling back to tuck in a stray line or snip a loose end – went black like a movie theater in a power outage. Even the exit signs may fail. A child whimpers, a man curses, the lovers in the corner of the balcony freeze just as he was about to        her

04.12.10 & 04.18.16