death = shock + grief

What Clive had never managed to fathom was what happened if you removed the shock from the equation. Did some emotional leviathan rise up to take the place of shock? Or were you simply left with the gnawing, insistent piranha of grief? Clive's beliefs certainly left him isolated at the best of times - his "hopping only" weekends were a special source of complaint among locals, and positive feedback must have been carelessly mislaid when he openly declared affiliation to the Crab-Apple Jelly Unlimited society - so how could a mild annoyance in life turn into a void in death?

Pat was repulsed by his chosen profession, had lived in a treasured groove that no wind of argument could shake her from and managed to trust the class system like most people rely on sunrise. Did Clive merely feel sorry for the pain caused to relatives? The resonating echo of her presence reminding us of our own mortality?

Time spent together simply works a little hole in your personality, to accomodate the other. We forge our outlines against the anvils of others. As Jim O'Rourke might have said, "Filers of the world, take over / ‘cause if you don't, the world will come to an end". Filing might be a vocation, but it doesn't solve all your problems. You know that little rhyme, "i after e, except after c"? For a rubber-stamped, die-cast filer, that is sacrilege. After c comes d, and eventually e, then i. And it won’t take long.

Mogwai - Burn Girl Prom Queen