Taking leave …

… Jenny Diski’s End Notes - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

When I returned the next day, I found Diski in bed, propped up against a bank of pillows, her finely lined face caught in the wan glow of the MacBook resting on her lap (the next installment of her L.R.B. memoir was due soon). She was eager to set something straight. However nonchalant she may have seemed the day before, she wanted me to know that the reality of her experience was far more complicated: “I’m perfectly capable of holding two, or more, contradictory things in my mind. If I say, on the one hand, ‘Death is an awfully big adventure’ (thank you Peter Pan for that quote) and swig morphine and tell jokes with Ian, that doesn’t also mean that I’m not terrified at the prospect of my own nonexistence.”