NOT KNOWING “Life is no longer a feast of distractions from death.” all I can sense are those twin grizzly roads: at no point do they meet. You are here, my friend, not only for tea and raspberries but also to make enquiries, to listen.” “Tell me what grows within your gray,” you say. “A pink rose.”  I surprise myself. “But I still don’t wish to live,” I remind you. “I don’t wish to live like this,” you respond. It’s the not knowing I can’t cope with…. “When I have done with both bone and brain,” I continue, will consciousness remain…? What if it won’t?  What will have been its point?” “Does there have to be a point?” you challenge. “This vision of parallel roads,” I persist – “roads without even one byway between them – is anathema to me. Death has become a distraction from living – from interconnection.” “Though not for the rose,” you observe. Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON First published in Sarasvati