So you’ll be in a world. And for a while that world will seem, for all intents and purposes, the world. Then, gradually (or slowly, or quickly, or, in a way, both), that world will be less and less of the world, the big one, that is: there’ll be less of the world that was yours, so magnificent, so troubled, so complex and full of detail, pain, and beauty; it will fade, its circumference will shrink, and there will be other worlds, and you’ll feel closest to those who were with you in that world, the old one, for they will understand it, having been there, and there will be many such people, and then there will be less of them, and less and less, and you won’t comprehend how this happens, but it will, and perhaps you’ll write a book in which you’ll try to save that world (your world, the old one), and the book will be thousands of pages long, or you won’t write that book, and it won’t matter whether you do or not, for soon there will be no one, or almost no one, who understands what you’re talking about when you speak about that world that was the world but now is not, and there will be other worlds, and the same thing will happen to them, and you’ll wonder how everyone bears it, but they’ll seem to, somehow, and so will you, and perhaps seeming to bear it is bearing it, appearance being so inseparable from reality and anyway it will all go by so quickly, blurring like the spokes of the wheels of some vehicle, not dark but colorless, which will bear you along, and so maybe you will be bearing it, and you’ll wonder if this is “wisdom.”

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