Enigma Variations

We’re torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost for having done them.

The past may or may not be a foreign country. It may morph or lie still, but its capital is always Regret, and what flushes through it is the grand canal of unfledged desires that feed into an archipelago of tiny might-have-beens that never really happened but aren’t unreal for not happening and might still happen though we fear they never will.

I’m looking at all this and I’m thinking that one day I won’t be here to see it and I know I’ll miss it, even if I won’t have a heartbeat to miss anything. I miss it now for the-days-when, the way I miss places I’ve never traveled to or things I’ve never done.

I learned to love commas from the rise and fall of his voice,” I said. “Unforgettable voice when he read aloud to us. Four years of college and the very best I took with me was a love for commas.

Nietzsche wrote that estranged friends may become declared enemies but in some mysterious way continue to remain friends, though on a totally different sphere. He called these ‘star friendships.’

There’s a life that takes place in ordinary time,” I said, “and another that bursts in but just as suddenly fizzles out. And then there’s the life we may never reach but that could so easily be ours if only we knew how to find it. It doesn’t necessarily happen on our planet, but is just as real as the one we live by—call it our ‘star life.

We make assumptions about how our lives are being charted without knowing that we’re even making these assumptions—which is the beauty of assumptions: they anchor us without the slightest clue that what we’re doing is trusting that nothing changes. We believe that the street we live on will remain the same and bear its name forever. We believe that our friends will stay our friends, and that those we love we’ll love forever. We trust and, by dint of trusting, forget we trusted.

The new setup made us feel odd, like strangers who’d time-traveled and landed home in the wrong century.

Regret is how we look forward to things we’ve long lost yet never really had. Regret is hope without conviction, I said. We’re torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost for having done them. Between one and the other, time plays all its cozy little tricks.

I’m looking at all this and I’m thinking that one day I won’t be here to see it and I know I’ll miss it, even if I won’t have a heartbeat to miss anything. I miss it now for the-days-when, the way I miss places I’ve never traveled to or things I’ve never done