Tem would sigh and pack his overnight case. We sat drinking coffee in rocking chairs on the front porch of a bed-and-breakfast on a hill in the chill of early spring. The silly little band-aids. I realize that it just looks like 2. What can I say. This is no time to go into the ups and downs, the stillbirths and the car accident and the estrangement and what happened to my brother, but I will say that I believe the above statement to be true.
April April 17, The knowledge heightened my life. The knowledge burdened my life. I regretted knowing. I was grateful to know. More courageously than Tem, for instance. I knew when to fear death, yes, but that also meant I knew when not to fear it. At the dinner table, our radiant daughter and her bashful husband announced that they were expecting in August. The ache was vast, vast. I watched them, their hugs and high-fives, as though from behind a glass wall.
Tem embraced me so warmly, with such relief, that I felt cruel. I stood up and, unsteady with dread, limped toward the bathroom. I stood there in the bathroom, hunched over the sink, clinging to the sink, staring at my face in the mirror until it no longer felt like my face.
This would develop into a distasteful and disorienting but addictive habit over the course of the next three and a half months. Aside from the increasing frequency with which I found myself falling into myself in the bathroom mirror, I got pretty good at hiding my dread. From Tem, and even at times from myself. We planted bulbs; we bought a cooler for summer picnics. I pretended and pretended; it felt nice to pretend. The dread rushed outward from my gut until my entire body was hot and cold.
I quietly quit my job, handed in the paperwork, and Tem took the week off, and we spent every minute together and invited the blissfully ignorant kids out for brunch I clutched the baby, forced her to stay in my lap even as she tried to wiggle and whine her way out, until eventually I had to hand her over to her mother, a chunk of my heart squirming away from me. Briefly I hung suspended and immortal in orgasm, and a few times, lying sun-stroked in bed in the late afternoon, felt infinite.
What can I say, what did we do? We held hands under the covers. We made fettuccine alfredo and, cleaning the kitchen, listened to our favorite radio show. I dried the dishes with a green dishcloth, warm and damp. On the morning of April 17, , I was half-amazed to open my eyes to the light. Six hours and four minutes into the day, and I was alive. Petrified, scared to move even a muscle, I wondered how death would come for me.
He looked so good to me, standing there holding two coffee mugs, his ancient baby-blue robe. I thought you were dying. It sounded like a figure of speech. But he meant it so literally, so very literally, that I gave a short sharp laugh. Would it be a heart attack, a stroke, a tumble down the basement stairs? I had the inclination to stay in bed resting my head on Tem, see if I might somehow sneak through the day, but by 10 a.
They may not keep the piece of paper, but they certainly memorize it and it's then up to each individual to approach the rest of their life in their own fashion. The lead character calls it a tattoo inside my brain. Once known, nothing can change the outcome. It was an okay lifespan. Certainly abbreviated, though; shorter than average; too short, yes; but not tragically short.
But the Knower never stops thinking about that date. While regular people can just go along in their normal lives, the Knowers will believe their days are always shorter already, simply because For every year there is a birthday celebration, there is also a death day depression.
This is a short story that made me think. Maybe I would want to know my date of death, perhaps to justify my life's actions and outcomes. Maybe I didn't want to know, so every day is a new beginning, oblivious to what is ahead. If anything, I wanted a longer story, so I could share some more of those dwindling days with the Knower herself. View 1 comment. Sep 22, tay taylor reads rated it really liked it Shelves: z-read , zzstar. May 27, Angie rated it really liked it Shelves: short-story.
This is a unique short story. Very imaginative and the author did a fabulous job of forming a complete story into so few pages. It really makes you contemplate that if you have the opportunity to know the exact day of your death would it change the way you would live out your life. I think this is a quick read for all the deep thinkers out there. Jan 09, Desiree rated it it was amazing. I loved this story; it felt so carefully crafted. Philosophical and poignant without being overwrought.
Caitlin Leslie rated it it was amazing Feb 03, Pibee rated it really liked it Dec 31, Issa rated it liked it May 29, Lynda Burak rated it really liked it Mar 06, Tanaya rated it really liked it Mar 21, Gabriela rated it really liked it Nov 15, Lamilla rated it really liked it May 21, Keshar rated it it was amazing Nov 21, Nicole Hyland rated it really liked it Aug 29, Rachel Peterson rated it really liked it Jul 27, Ayisa Can rated it really liked it Apr 18, Polly Thayer Miller rated it did not like it Mar 29, Eliza rated it liked it Apr 05, Shivangi rated it liked it Aug 30, Like her math teacher lying about.
This book provides an in-depth analysis of the doctrines of early Advaita Vedanta and Indian Mahayana Buddhism in order to examine the origins of Vedanta. This study offers a new interpretation of 1 Corinthians Taking a social identity approach, Ho investigates the inner logic of Paul from the ears of the Corinthian correspondence. Ho argues that Paul consistently indoctrinates new values for the audience to uphold which are against the mainstream of social values in.
The Knowers is a young adult novel that follows Will, whose sole ambition is to get out of high school alive and away from his vicious father. Some Possible Solutions offers an idiosyncratic series of "What ifs": What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if you. This is a 14th-century biography of the famous Persian mystic poet and Knower of God , Jal l al-D n-e R m , in the form of a large compendium of Sufi-style teaching stories.
It was commissioned by a grandson about fifty years after R m s death. The author-compiler, Afl k ,. This is a chronological history of the Sufi tradition, divided in to three sections, early, middle and modern periods. The volume outlines the origins and early developments of Sufism. Techniques explained by the masters--for today's spiritual seeker Meditation is designed to give you direct access to the spiritual. Whether it's through deep breathing during a busy day, listening to the quiet after turning off the car radio, chanting in prayer, or ten minutes of visualization exercises each morning, meditation.
By exploring diverse and sometimes positive roles for ignorance, A Defense of Ignorance offers a revisionary approach to epistemology that challenges core assumptions about epistemic values.
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