END
is a word that stays satisfyingly true to its meaning by bringing itself to an end before it has really begun, by carrying the illusion of being an end in itself and by holding out the ancient but forlorn human hope for a word to end all words. The word denotes a decisive wielding of power in a human life: to bring something or even, shockingly, someone to end, is seen as a decisive, consequential action by a person, and carries an almost mythological power. To be someone who has ended something is to be someone who has taken the reins of their life at last, and who now has the power to take a new direction; someone who has brought to a satisfying close what needed to be closed a long time ago.
But mercifully, the word end also carries along, on its very short back, its own ancient, abiding and companionable spirit of contradiction: to announce that something has ended is to elicit an immediate and opposite reaction. We have only to be told that something has ended to immediately search in our mind for all the ways it has certainly not ended. We have only to be told that something is out of fashion to immediately bring to mind all the ways that it continues, against all odds, to abide in our lives and most secretly and embarrassingly, in our own wardrobe. Even those definitive and satisfying words THE END, read at the end of an old-fashioned film or novel, only serve to make us think of the new life this particular ending grants to all the characters whose lives we have been following to this last, definitive, arbitrarily drawn threshold of their lives. End almost never means the end. End only means we have reached the limit of our ability to track what is occurring. End is the word that introduces us to an intimacy with, an anticipation of, and even a readiness for, new beginnings.
End is never an ending in itself. End is transition, a temporarily visible seam in the invisible, making us, just for a moment, aware of what previously we could not see or hear or imagine and also, what is soon to impinge upon our surprised senses. Endings ask us to brace for the coming impact of a new and surprising announcement.
End is a merciful and useful word, not in its accuracy, but in its very lack of accuracy: it gives us the excuse to take a breath, to take a psychological rest in the illusion that something has now finished and that, miracle of miracles, something else has not begun, and that it may even be a good while before something new and stressful and perplexing begins. We wield the word more as a necessary excuse for temporary repose than as a real attempt at understanding what is happening. Human beings need endings whether they truly exist or not. End is our good friend, but end, of course, can never be an end in itself. The word loves its own illusory life in our mouths, while knowing all along there is no right true end in any of the endings we imagine we desire.
-from the forthcoming, Consolations II
My favorite line: "End is a merciful and useful word, not in its accuracy, but in its very lack of accuracy: it gives us the excuse to take a breath, to take a psychological rest in the illusion that something has now finished and that, miracle of miracles, something else has not begun, and that it may even be a good while before something new and stressful and perplexing begins." Always grateful for the pause, the breath I didn't know I was holding.
And this one: “End is our good friend, but end, of course, can never be an end in itself.”
I now recognize there’s no such thing as an absolute ending.