"Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life."

But the fact that you are hungry and are not eating anything (whereas I am fed to the gills here, although I am never hungry) and that you have circles under your eyes (after all, the photo can’t have been retouched—these circles take away half the pleasure your picture gives me, which still leaves me enough to want to kiss your hand so long you’d never have to translate again or carry luggage from the station)—that I can’t forgive you and will never forgive you and even if we’re sitting in front of our hut a hundred years from now I’ll still reproach you for that. 

ALT

— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

ALT

— The School of Your Book / Letter to Jennifer S. Cheng Study Abroad, Chen Chen

But on a better subject: Do you know when you were most beautifully dressed in Vienna, absolutely, absurdly beautifully dressed? There can’t be any argument about it: on Sunday.

Tuesday, July 6

By the way, why am I a human being, with all the torments this extremely vague and horribly responsible condition entails? Why am I not, for example, the happy wardrobe in your room, which has you in full view whenever you’re sitting in your chair or at your desk or when you’re lying down or sleeping (all blessings upon your sleep!)? Why am I not that? Because I would break down with grief if I had seen your misery during these last days, or even if—you should leave Vienna.

Thursday, July 15

Milena, industrious one, your room is undergoing a change in my mind; the desk and the whole place really didn’t look much like work before, but now it does, and so convincingly that I can feel this work; in your room it must be magnificently hot and cool and happy. Only the wardrobe remains as ponderous as always and sometimes the lock is broken and it doesn’t yield a thing, desperately staying shut, and in particular it refuses to give up the dress you wore on “Sunday”; if you should ever set up house again we’ll throw it out.

Thursday, July 22

Yes, the wardrobe. It will probably be the object of our first and last fight. I’ll say: “We’re throwing it out.” You’ll say: “It’s staying.” I’ll say: “Choose between it and me.” You’ll say: “Just a second. Frank and Schrank, * they rhyme. I’ll take the Schrank.” “Fine,” I’ll say and slowly walk down the stairs (which?) and—if I still haven’t found the Danube Canal, I’ll be living happily ever after.

Tuesday, July 27

And incidentally I’m all in favor of the wardrobe—you just shouldn’t wear the dress. You’ll wear it out and what will be left for me then?

Tuesday, July 27

And I trust you didn’t read my dumb jokes aloud to your wardrobe? You know I love almost everything in your room to the point of swooning.

Tuesday, July 27

“After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: if anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately. Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she did this. I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu-biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, sho bit se-wee? The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—she stopped crying. She thought our flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late. Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother until we got on the plane and would ride next to her—Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out, of course, they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, the lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies. And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—non-alcoholic—and the two little girls from our flight, one African American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice and lemonade, and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”

“I wish I’d done everything on Earth with you.”

Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980; February 17th, 1970