Just a month ago there was more than enough room in my head to commemorate the death of my mum. She’d passed away 15 years ago -I know, some losses survive undiminished year after year. Except now things have completely changed.

When I tell people I’m totally against death –which I am, obviously, this attitude doesn’t apply to every situation. Or is exercised at any price.

Talking about death –last month, on the 27^th of January, it was 75 years ago that  Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by the Red Army.

The husband of a friend died in 2019 -Ton van Schaik. As did Herman Wouk. Peggy Lipton. Robert Frank. Moshe Arens. Lori Gilbert Kaye. Barbra Siperstein. Rudi Oppenheimer. Karl Lagerfeld…

Samuel Beckett lived most of his life in Paris, France. He died there in 1989, aged 83. The Irish novelist, playwright and short-story writer, as well as poet, literary translator and theatre director, was world-famous by then. 

Here is some news for those trying to get through the day, or the night, while being nagged by anxiety, fear, self-doubt, or whatever shows up in order to avoid the burden of failure.

Last night I found myself at page 99 of Marcel Proust’s Du Cote de Chez Swann, the first volume of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. It included a 35-page introduction by some professor. So in fact, I had only read 64 pages of his masterpiece over a period of some six weeks… 

Going over my most important Dead List, the one for family, friends and other significant people, seeing all its different names again, I realized I couldn’t do it; Continue reading THE CONCEPT OF FAILURE

I promised to talk about my Killing List this time -except it’s more complicated than I thought. Continue reading MY KILLING LIST

Last month I wrote about these Dead Lists I had created in an attempt to prevent too much chaos in my head. Continue reading NOT ABOUT MY KILLING LIST