“I’ve become more aware of myself. Because of the situation. Now that I’m no I’m leaving, I see things differently. I’ve been aware of little things that I would have missed before.
‘Like what?’
Like seeing the sun shine off the roof of our old barn. I saw that this morning and stood there, looking at it. I found it moving. It was beautiful - it really was. I don’t usually think about if a landscape is beautiful or not, but I couldn’t control this feeling. I saw it and recognized that it was beautiful. But you know what? It made me sad.
‘Sad?’ I can hear him typing. He’s trying to do it quietly, but I can hear. ‘Why?’
I don’t know. I have no idea.
‘Because beauty is fleeting, maybe?’
No, I say. It’s the opposite. Beauty isn’t fleeting. Beauty is eternal. But . . . I’m not. I’m fleeting. That’s more the point.
He’s typing stops abruptly.
‘ that’s quite profound. You do seem more self-aware and introspective them when I first arrived. It makes me think of Baudelaire: ‘ I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy’.”