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10

Franz Wright

Thoughts of A Solitary Farmhouse

He had been thinking how good it would be not to have so much fear about dying, not to take it so personally. He was sixty years old. He was no longer suffering from a shattering, much dreaded disease, he was suffering from death, he was dying of death. I want to speak of this frankly, from an open heart, and get it over with, look at me, he had cried, or thought he had. Why should I waste one more minute on my absence when I am standing right here? What's it about, when you boil it all down? Nothing, it's nothing but the force we exert all our lives to exclude death from our minds confronting us, when it does arrive, as the horror of being excluded — he was sure it went something like that. The Canadian wind coming in off Lake Erie rattling the windows, violently forcing the front and back doors. This got us his attention, and he looked up; but I can't understand how he managed. Seeing as he wasn't there. And neither was his other you, desolate sister, Christ-haunted child davening slowly, spider at work on its primer in a distant corner, the horizontal snow hour after hour, all the black highways that led to his door, once, deleted. Let's try not to worry about it so much, he whispered. It's just one day out of your life — one moment out of your day­ . . . .

 

 

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