Sometimes, the “I” that I write with doesn’t feel very much like me. Writing has become a performance, and is no longer either fluid or truthful. It’s not that what I write is a lie, but that it doesn’t get very close to the bone. Writing is now a large-scale social interaction, and doesn’t feel like a one-to-one conversation anymore.
If I was still writing for an unknown audience, I would be telling you that the two biggest topics on my mind at the moment are birth and death. I sat through the funeral service of someone I didn’t know on Monday, and felt that it wasn’t being done thoroughly enough. No-one should be reduced to a cobbled-together eulogy and a single meaningless hymn. But let’s not pretend we are celebrating someone’s life, whilst comforting ourselves with the assumption that that person wanted to die.
And why would anyone want to die? Reunion with one’s loved ones is a vain hope, a fairytale. After death, what can there be? I see it as like powder dissolving in water: becoming part of the solution. Yet I still have firm ideas about my ashes being buried or scattered in a particular place, as though that will make a difference to me by then. I still want certain songs to be played, and certain words to be said. My only deviation from my nihilist view of death is this: if you say a prayer over my body, I will haunt you.
In the office today, someone became a grandmother for the first time. We bought pink champagne and baby clothes, and our voices softened, and everyone stood around with their heads tilted to one side, and big soft smiles on their faces. We’re all expected to join in with this burst of emotion about a stranger’s child. If you don’t join in, it’s assumed that you’re one of those hard-headed baby-hating women, with no feminine emotions.
The older generation slowly disappears, and the middle generations look to the youngest with expectant raised eyebrows, knowing perfectly well that if any of us was actually to announce that we were pregnant, the grown-ups would find reasons to shake their heads about it. It wouldn’t be the right time. We don’t have enough money, stability, security. And really, what possible rational reason is there for having a child? I can only see it as a purely sentimental decision, or a non-decision: nothing but an inability to act against our basest instincts.
With my head, I see that.