I have been sitting here attempting to write, but the music in my ears is too lovely, too hypnotic – paralytically so. It is a CD called ‘Fly, Fly my Sadness’ which is a collaboration between the Tuvan throat singers Huun-Huur-Tu & the Bulgarian choir Angelite. Throat-singing combined with minor-key polyphonic harmonies! I literally don’t know what to do with myself. I am going to marry this.

I can’t really describe it any better than that it just makes me want to crumple into a ball on the floor, fold into myself & let it flow into my ears. This is the sort of music that makes you feel like you are just one large resonant surface, a sort of full-body cochlea or tympanum, it is so thoroughly nourishing. Certain notes hit me & I stop breathing for a moment. I wish I could make sounds like this.

& I suppose, thinking about it, the certain pauses & waves & spaces & reverberations are a little reflection of my thoughts, all the things my body can’t quite voice; this emptiness and fullness that I am feeling simultaneously. Her death has dug a hole in me, the edges raw with frost -- & then filled this hole to overflowing with little red berries, babyzna, the (spiritual) inheritance from a grandmother. & I am overwhelmed. I am so grateful for all she has given me, to carry with me – but I am also terrified I will never live up to her. There’s a desolation like a spruce tree with the top branches lopped off, the weight of snow now settling heavy on the low boughs. ‘My family tree is losing all its leaves.’ I want so much to make her proud, I don’t want to forget – there is just so much, so much I don’t know what to do with myself.

It’s just been harder since the funeral, I thought it would get easier, I thought it would be more of a release, a relief. But now her presence feels so faraway & dispersed, little atoms scattered, light on water freezing up, dissolving, sucked back into the sky.

I was shoveling snow on the driveway the other night, & stopped under the ash-tree. The first stars I saw when I looked up were the Pleiades, faint like smoke swirling above the house, a cluster of cold breath in front of my face – a small sign.

& I thought that perhaps I am being impatient, maybe I should let her rest, maybe I just need to calm down & then I might feel her closer to me, then I might feel her presence more strongly within me. But this all just makes me feel so young, so tired, so sad. I am sad, selfish, & three years old & I want her back now. Бабусенько, де ти? Приходь до мене, веселости немає без тобою ...