They know that tragedy is not glamorous. They know it doesn't play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person. Tragedy is ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing.
Sometimes I feel like we're a knot, too tangled to be taken apart.
Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!
What is it with you today?†says Christina on the way to breakfast. Her eyes are still swollen from sleep and her tangled hair forms a fuzzy halo around her face. “Oh, you know,†I say. “Sun shining. Birds chirping.†She raises an eyebrow at me, as if reminding me that we are in an underground tunnel.
We are born to love as we are born to die, and between the heartbeats of those two great mysteries lies all the tangled undergrowth of our tiny lives. There is nowhere to go but through. And so we walk on, lost, and lost again, in the mapless wilderness of love.
I really don't even know you, and yet, in my life, you are forever entangled; to my history, inextricably bound.