We haven't got anywhere yet

"For whom or for what are you in mourning?" she asked him point-blank, aware that this unexpected question shook him.

Eléazard felt his scalp tingle. He had reached the point of seeing the previous metaphor as representing his attitude to Elaine and of trying it out at random on the thousand and one aspects of his anguish, and with one word this stranger had hit the bull's eye.

"You're amazing!" he said with genuine admiration.

He thought: I'm in mourning for my love, for my youth, for an unsatisfactory world. I'm in mourning for mourning itself, for its twilight and for the soothing warmth of its lamentation. . .

But what he said was: "I'm in mourning for everything that has not succeeded in being born, for everything we do our best to destroy, for obscure reasons, every time it puts out a shoot. How can I put it . . . I can't understand why we always see beauty as a threat, happiness as degradation. . ."

The rain stopped, replaced by a silence spattered with drops and sudden trickles of water.

"We haven't got anywhere yet," said Loredana, screwing up her eyes.

— from Where Tigers Are at Home, by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès.

Why think one thing, but say another? Some days I too am in mourning for my love, for my youth, for an unsatisfactory world. What do you mourn?