Sorrow involves introspection, like looking at something through a long tunnel. Memory harbors the original sadness, which loses its immediacy and takes on a bittersweetness. It no longer hurts to feel; in fact, feeling becomes an art form. It has the sedateness of a black veil, hints at depth, as though a bedrock of meaning had been plumbed. Sadness is for girls; sorrow for women. When I experience sorrow, a death has occurred: not so much of someone or of something else, as of the self. I watch that self from the distance of rebirth. There is still a cavity in one’s chest, but now it can be contained. I can take it out, open it up, and tell a story about it, some inevitably comforting tale.
There is something elegant about this emotion, as though it were being captured in slow motion and outlines of itself were multiplying behind it, layer after layer after layer. I am a spring stretched from end to end, an accordion that will start to fold in on itself. S-o-r-r-o-w. Double the r, take twice the o, rhymes with hollow. At the end of the tunnel is your face. This is all I know.
