IX

The power of London to obliterate personal affairs depended upon unlimited freedom to be still. The worst suffering in the days of uncertainty had been the thought of movements that would make time move.⁠ ⁠… Now that the stillness had returned, life was going on, dancing, flowing, looping out in all directions able to bear its periods of torment in the strength of its certainty of recovery, so long as time stayed still. Life ceased when time moved on. Out in the world life was ceasing all the time. All the time people were helplessly doing things that made time move; growing up, old people growing onwards, with death suddenly in sight, rushing here and there with words that had lost their meaning, dodging and crouching no matter how ridiculously, to avoid facing it. Young men died in advance; it was visible in their faces, when they took degrees and sat down to tasks that made time begin to move; never again free from its movement, always listening and looking for the stillness they had lost.⁠ ⁠… But why is the world which produces them so fresh and real and free, and then seizes and makes them dead old leaves whirled along by time, so different to people alone in themselves when time is not moving? People in themselves want nothing but reality. Why can’t reality exist in the world? All the things that happen produce friction because they distract people from the reality they are unconsciously looking for. That is why there are everywhere torrents of speech. If she had not read all those old words in the train and had been silent. Silence is reality. Life ought to be lived on a basis of silence, where truth blossoms. Why isn’t such an urgent thing known? Life would become like the individual; alive⁠ ⁠… it would show, inside and out, and people would leave off talking so much. Life does show, seen from far off, pouring down into stillness. But the contemplation of it, not caring for pain or suffering except as part of a picture, which no one who is in the picture can see, seems mean.