... having been breathed out

And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left the station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think ‘the past is finished’
Or 'the future is before us’.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark,
Here between the hither and the farther shore.’

—TS Eliot, from “The Dry Salvages” (Four Quartets)

Another possible title/epigraph source for this Paris story I’m working on. The Violet Hour was organized around lines from The Waste Land, so there’s a certain appeal in using Eliot again. I also love the train imagery here (there are approximately a million train journeys in my thing, good grief), and the idea of the in-between quality inherent in every journey: that we are constantly in flux; that we are not the same selves who set out, nor are we yet the selves who will arrive. The idea “That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here” is very relevant to the John arc as I’m envisioning it, too.

“Fare forward” is also…compelling. I mean, it’s really the only option we have, isn’t it? Ain’t no way past but through.

     Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

It’s growing on me, for sure.