snip
has he ever shared larkin’s yearning for faith?
'no,’ he says. 'there isn’t the evidence and i don’t see why anyone would want it to be true. a permanent, invigilated, regulated dictatorship which you are told is for your own good. i can’t think of anything worse.’
and does he share larkin’s fear of death?
he cannot pretend that he hasn’t been giving this some thought lately. but he approaches the matter elliptically. the philosopher david hume, he says, said you are not afraid of the time before you were born when there was nothingness, so why should you be any more concerned afterwards? 'lucretius put it more simply, saying you’re not going to know you’re dead so there’s nothing to be afraid of. what larkin was saying was, you bloody fools; that’s exactly what i’m afraid of – annihilation.’ he pauses. 'it is a disagreeable thought.’
/snip
hitchens expressed these thoughts in hitch 22, and they've been mine as well since i was a young girl. leave it to hitchens to find others' thoughts and bring them together so well. i find so few people who understand this.
do you?
when i was reading his memoir, i was moved to take this picture. i don't know why. i hadn't planned it out, but immediately, i saw it and knelt down to capture it. to me, it expressed my recession from life:
