When a man beings to open up, he is generally ridiculed or distrusted by men, praised and appreciated by women. If it is not safe for women to open up in front of some men, it is not safe for men to open up too much in front of anybody. I have always struggled to walk the line between openness, self-awareness, emotion and memory. And yet, I wish to open up more than avoid ridicule. If you pursue an open life, a spiritual life, a life without the fear that much of our society is increasingly built on – it is lucrative – then you will experience isolation, ridicule and accept the idea that most people think you are just crazy. Okay by me.

I mourn humans, children, not sheep or chickens. I understand people feel differently, and that is fine by me.  I am filled with emotion. We have to do it all our own way. Maria says she does not want to be in the same state when Lenore dies. Or Simon. Or Rose or Izzy, for that matter. Emotions are the radioactive seeds of light and imagination that we plant in our subsconscious. In the creative life, they sprout all the time. Yet sentimentality or unthinking emotion is a trap for me, quicksand in which we can quickly sink.

I have been visiting a friend who has suffered grievous human loss, and I want to help her, but cannot. She is deep in grief, and it is her wish to stay there. In hospice I learned to try and be an active listener. When dealing with death, it’s not helpful to try and cheer someone up, urge them to move on, wish they’d get over it. The choice is to accept where she is, or move on. I will accept where she is, but not enter into it. You cannot tell anybody else how to get a dog. How to love. How to grieve. Nor should you. You can simply be present in their lives, and cling to your own sense of the world.