Death is not a hunter unbeknownst to its prey

[trenchkamen]

Fuck this weather. This is ludicrous.

I realized something strange while talking to Granddad the other night. He was telling me how one of his friends had, long story short, gone delirious with fever and driven herself out to the middle of the forest in a small town in Wisconsin. A search party of 200+ people finally found her before nightfall. He said that she was incredibly lucky that she had been found. I said that she probably would have been found dead.

I felt odd immediately after saying this, but Granddad said, "Yes, she very well could have," without missing a beat. And I realized why I felt odd. Granddad is 86. For all that he still lives alone and practices law, he lives constantly surrounded by memento mori. My grandmother died from breast cancer when I was one year old. Most of his friends are dead. Death is a daily and very real possibility for him, for all that he is in good health now.

There's an interesting tendency not to speak of death around the elderly. I'm not prone to observing social graces, but even I felt slightly awkward discussing mortality with my grandfather. It's not remote to them--not a joke, not a distant specter, but immediate even in the way that those who have lost people in their young lives are not aware.

I finally defeated Izanami-no-Okami and re-started a new cycle in Persona 4, even though I really should move on to something else. Really I should. Started reading The Left Hand of Darkness from the THEM library.

I have a huge cold sore on my lower lip, and the roof of my mouth is covered in lesions. I've had herpes simplex labialis (like the lips on my face, not the ones between my legs--labia literally means "lips" in Latin) since I can remember--well before pre-school, in any case. So this has happened a lot, my whole life. It never gets any more pleasant. I wonder why my immune system took a hit.

Comments

[fanbeatsman.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much of the awkwardness is shared by the elderly person you're speaking to, in situations like that - I mean, I've felt that kind of "oh shit probably shouldn't have brought that topic up" when talking to my gf's grandad, but that's rooted in my perspective as someone who is terrified of death and has *touch wood* very little experience of it (I've never had a close family member die). Does it upset a man who was a GP for most of his life, who's seen his wife die recently, who's been living with terminal cancer that the doctors all thought was going to kill him years ago, to hear about death? Or does it just upset me to think about it? Idk.

What do you think of The Left Hand of Darkness, so far? I read it as part of a general binge on Le Guin's stuff, and didn't really get why it's the one held up as the classic - although interesting, it felt dated and kind of like it was only the first step in her thinking on the subject, to me.

Sympathies re. the mouth pain :/ I suffer really badly from mouth ulcers, always have, and when they descend on me the pain just puts my whole face on edge. Hope everything clears up soon.

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

I also get ulcers. We call them canker sores here; I'm certain they're the same thing.

I'm like one chapter in, and so far, it's rather dry.