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– ANAKANA SCHOFIELD – We sit on trains. We see them crash as they are gently budging from nondescript stations. That’s the point. We see the possibility of death or specifically our own death every corner we turn. Especially when it’s quiet or dark. When it is quiet we are particularly afraid. At night it is quiet. At night death can come for us. The thanatophobe doesn’t like the night. She doesn’t like it one little bit. It might be concluded the TP has an over active imagination or a reactive imagination or is she facing full frontal what the majority deny? Will their struggle come later or will they be absolved of it entirely because they will not know about death, once they are dead. Grief is for those left behind. Grief is back of the queue. Death anxiety is the chronic queue jumper no one wants to challenge or tackle. Whatever she, the TP, has, it serves the act of writing well. When you do not struggle to imagine the worst, you can posit the very worst. Perhaps you will go where others won’t. I do not know. I only know one TP. PART 8: ACCUMULATION Grief accumulates and the novel accumulates. Death doesn’t accumulate, unless it’s protracted. At the moment of death, however you arrive there, the final breath is the final breath and it just pops you off 148
page 167
– The Difficult Question – when it’s decided by whatever collection of circumstances that the moment is now. That single moment of your very last breath is fast (as long as one breath) and this has an inbuilt equality. Everyone takes a last breath. You are alive. Your pulse stops. You are no longer alive. You are dead. It’s the biological full stop. (Pulse 78. Chest pressure hurting). I suppose you could be aware or unaware of that impending last breath in advance, but only those around you actively staring at you can be conscious of it in the absolute moment that it happens. Confirmed absolutely just after it’s happened. She’s gone. My point is death is coming for everybody. No one is exempt. It is wholesomely inclusive. You can ignore it but it will not ignore you. Nobody is born without a witness. It’s not possible to be born without a witness because you are exiting the witness’s body. Even if that woman has died, and you survive, your birth will be witnessed by the person who retrieves you. Imagine in contrast how many people die with nobody bearing witness. And worse still, have no one to bury them. I find this idea of dying alone, unwitnessed, the most incomprehensible idea. Perhaps akin to never having a single reader. It’s an irrational expectation that death could be otherwise, but fiction writers do not trade in the rational. I can conceptualize a whole economy that could 149

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– ANAKANA SCHOFIELD –

We sit on trains. We see them crash as they are gently budging from nondescript stations. That’s the point. We see the possibility of death or specifically our own death every corner we turn. Especially when it’s quiet or dark. When it is quiet we are particularly afraid. At night it is quiet. At night death can come for us. The thanatophobe doesn’t like the night. She doesn’t like it one little bit.

It might be concluded the TP has an over active imagination or a reactive imagination or is she facing full frontal what the majority deny? Will their struggle come later or will they be absolved of it entirely because they will not know about death, once they are dead. Grief is for those left behind. Grief is back of the queue. Death anxiety is the chronic queue jumper no one wants to challenge or tackle. Whatever she, the TP, has, it serves the act of writing well. When you do not struggle to imagine the worst, you can posit the very worst. Perhaps you will go where others won’t. I do not know. I only know one TP.

PART 8: ACCUMULATION

Grief accumulates and the novel accumulates.

Death doesn’t accumulate, unless it’s protracted. At the moment of death, however you arrive there, the final breath is the final breath and it just pops you off

148

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