Part of the grand submission of getting older is the pleasurable fright of letting yourself with an almost lavish recklessness and bracing and pure absence of self-regard be truly interested in someone else and what they have to say, abandoning yourself in them and their being, giving up your space, giving them your space, fading from the picture without so much as a wave, which would only draw attention, just a passively willed invitation to self-erasure, death in life, you’re becoming mere rich soil for the benefit of another right there as they take on the broad outlines of all your unfulfilled promise, thank you, thank you so much, goodbye.

Carl Hansen Manks
02 07 22