neverness

Neverness. The tongue pulls back into the pit before it rushes out twice, and twice it is tamed, stroked by the limit of teeth. This is how the word feels in my mouth - true to its meaning. A beautiful word, Borges said in an interview, "a word that's a poem in itself, full of hopelessness, sadness, and despair".

There doesn't seem to be room for neverness in this world, so bent on believing, doing, exceeding, saving and delivering, healing, detoxing, bettering, having it all. It is rubbed in our faces every day, can-do, can-have everness.

If everness has a home on earth, it's on this island. The controllers are for ever-changing it in their quest for the ever-lasting day in the sun. We are destined for everness, it seems, when the seasons that mark the passing of time never mark it here.

Suffer neverness instead? "There will never be . . . I shall never see . . . We will never do . . . She shall never learn . . . He will never make . . . It can never be . . ." It is a pall too heavy to wish on anything, anyone.

Writing, and finishing especially, are susceptible to the spirit of neverness. If you have ever set hope by words and yet never heard the whine, I envy you.