I’m re-reading Simon Gray’s Coda. He writes of his cancer diagnosis and of the doctor’s telling him he doesn’t have long to live. In much of the book he is in Crete with his wife. I can see it, hear it and feel it. I know it through his words and my own memory (though I’ve never actually been to that particular island). I want to escape. I know why. This writing is hard. I don’t know the path yet. I am inching along in the dark, mostly. All I can do is continue and keep writing. (I can still fantasise at the same time, of that blue sky, warm sea and nothingness). If I was dying (which of course I am) would we go?
