you know when you decide to just take a chapter to eulogize someone who’s still alive? me too
it’s about declaring yourself dead even though you’re still alive because you know for certain that death is coming and that the specific timing doesn’t matter as much as the end result… that even though the boat didn’t carry you to your death on this day, the novel is also a boat and its narrative can ferry you from life to death whenever it wants… that even though the whale didn’t swallow you this time, the novel is also a whale and if you’re in the novel’s stomach you’re already dead… to be a character in a tragedy is to exist in a perpetual state of pre-death and sometimes it’s just easier on the mind to declare yourself dead already so you can get used to thinking of yourself as the ghost you’ll inevitably become
