At one time she was there, two feet in front of me, but, as time passes and that moment recedes into the distance, her memory, instead of receding in proportion, yet remains the same, until she appears to me as a mountain seen on the horizon: looming, impossibly.
I know this is an optical trick, and I am amused by this trick because I know it is unreal and that there is no way that she, as a human being, is anything like the towering She of my imagination, yet I am pressed still by the weight of this vista.
In this way she feels as permanent as anything can be, as relatively permanent as the Himalayas, but even this permanency I know is amusing, given the brevity of the actual relationship, or more important, given the brevity of a human life.
In all, it is like thinking that Mt. Everest isn’t simply named after some man called Everest, but is in fact that man.
