Listening to Mahler, thinking of things to comes, infinite choices, paths, delights, mountains to climb, peaks to conquer. So many books to read, so many mouths to kiss.
Then one day you’re at the top of the mountain, wondering how you did it. Wondering about what’s left, when everything is behind you.
And you start sliding down the white polished rock of forgetfulness and pain, thorns bruising your skin, ripping open old wounds. It barely hurts, because you stopped hoping long ago. You just want less thoughts, less pain, less memories.
You listen to Mahler, and you remember, the scent of things to come, the power of choice, the thrill of immortality.
I was walking home from the theater with Goethe this evening when we saw a small boy in a plum colored waistcoat. Youth, Goethe said, is the silky apple butter on the good brown bread of possibility.
Donald Barthelme, “Conversations with Goethe,” The New Yorker (1980)