Parsifal

Parsifal achieves the Grail and the burden of perfection is too much for him to bear. He disappears in a puff of magnesium smoke. And the poor love was still a virgin. What kind of a life is that?

Perfection is stasis, is death. Nothing that exists in time can be perfect. There will always be something more that can be added to it.

A Friendship

I have tried to revive the connection with email chat, but he won’t have it. He fends me off with weak jokes. The jokes always were weak and, even though he has a string of books to his name, he has never learned to write readable English. Perhaps it’s as well he keeps clear. The connection is rotted by resentment. I despise him and always did. I thought- even when I loved him most - that he was a pedant and morally weak. Our friendship was never creditable to me. But, as Yeats says, “friendship never dies.” It is stronger than all the corrosives we pour over it.