Summary

209-210: For Duras, alcohol was a placeholder, not a consolation for the lack of God. Renouncing alcohol would not bring God back. For some, emptiness itself is the divine. For Emerson, dreams and drunkenness could mimic the divine, a sort of “natural high” (#210).

211-214: But is it only mimicry? What is true, false, bitter, or sweet? On her deathbed, the speaker would have to name loving blue and making love with “you” as the two sweetest things. In complete honesty, they were not even sweet very often.

215: We often see pain as the most real and vivid experience. When one is in pain, everything else seems delusion.

216: The radio says it is the fifth anniversary of the day “everything changed.” The speaker grieves, along with Emerson, that “grief can teach me nothing” (#216).

217-219: The speaker’s injured friend has no time for platitudes...