Two comrades from the war promised they'd both show up to each other's funeral, no matter what.
-- a joke
The joke is funny in the darkest way, but the very impossibility makes the compact even more solemn.
Absence, the highest form of presence
-- James Joyce
Before Google Calendar added the birthdays tracking feature, I would manually add my friends' birthdays as repeating events. The system offered three options for when the recurring event should end:
- [x] Never
- [ ] On {date}
- [ ] After {number} occurrences
This UI is a masterpiece of memento mori. I always chose "Never" but I knew it was a lie. I would betray my friend as one of the comrades from the war would inevitably do. Staring at that "Never" teleports me into the end of the story, and I knew it would end with emptyness, a void, the non-existence of nothingness.
Nothing lasts forever. Indeed, only nothing lasts forever.
This is my TeleAbsence moment. We all have made those impossible promises. Perhaps the real betrayal is forgetting to carry the weight of that impossiblility while we're still here.