... is the title of a book by Kazuo Ishiguro and was very popular about a year or so ago ... I suppose we are all trying to find someone who will hold onto us, who will never never let us go, who are our anchors, stopping us from being swept away by this world. Yet, sometimes, as Tommy said in the book; "I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end, it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how I think it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever".
The desperation, the helplessness ... summaries so well of life in London ...
In the book, there is this idea of Norfolk being a lost corner, where all the lost property found in the world goes to ... If only such places do exist on this earth, so that "when we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we don't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had the last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel around the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk".
This is, however, a dangerous ground to tread on, as during the process, we develop ways to cope with our losses; pretending, devaluing, decentralising, replacing ... and eventually, we do not even recognise the tremendous darkness of our losses ...
