from Possession by A. S. Byatt--

It is possible for a writer to make, or remake at least, for a reader, the primary pleasures of eating, or drinking, or sex. . . . They do not habitually elaborate on the equally intense pleasure of reading. . . .

[Yet] now and then there are readings that make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark--readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know, or how. In these readings, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was always there, that we the readers, knew it was always there, and have always known it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge.

* * *

I woke this morning feeling, for the first time in weeks, rested, alert, focused, calm. The sensation is so new that I can hardly stop marveling over it. Certainly I have been working steadily toward this end--setting traps for sleep and solace--yet a generalized hopelessness has shadowed my efforts, an expectation of failure: similar to the way in which, when I'm really sick, I can no longer picture health.

But in fact the traps I've been setting seem to have worked. I am better: fully rested, mostly over my cold. My sap is running again, reviving the vigors of mind and body but also the silly dogged optimism that I have somehow managed to tote around for much of my life.

* * *

Outside the sky is barely blue, and a pale crescent moon floats among wisps of moving cloud. T has just headed out to take photos, the cat has just headed in to crunch up his breakfast, and I, like a fat spider, am sitting in my couch corner thinking about books, thinking about warmth, thinking about Ray's tragicomic playlist, thinking about the swirls of friendship and time, and about my faithful sons, and about this long sweet unstructured day that lies ahead of me . . . thinking also, with gratitude, of my eagerness to enjoy it.

I grew up in a glass-half-empty household. Always, fear and dread; always, an assumption that life is out to do us wrong: "Why bother? Why get my hopes up? No one cares. The deck is stacked against me. Let me wallow in my failures." Et cetera.

It's notable how hard my sister and I have resisted that state of mind, how appalled we are when we find ourselves slipping back into the mire. We share a horror.

* * *

I'm not sure if writing that essay about my history with Ray was a deliberate element of my "set a trap for recovery" plan. It's hard to tell with writing. I resort to words so automatically; they are what I do; they are my frame, day by day, decade by decade. Writing isn't therapy; it's greed, an obsession with making.

Still, I try to say what I see. What I feel. Even when I'm lying, as I often am. Though I don't think I was lying in that essay.

* * *

To go back to the Byatt quotation: the writer, too, has moments, when "every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark." What melodrama in that claim! But writing--and reading, and sex, and long-acquainted love, and dear friendship . . . and food, too, and making a garden, and listening to music, and also grief: these glories of body and mind and heart, these sentimental arcs, these greeds and ecstasies . . .  Why else do we live, if not to leap into their arms again and again and again and again?