My CommonPlace

TIME (IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH) August 17, 2011

Elisabeth Tova Bailey, who began working on a book entitled The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating during a year she spent confined to her bed by a severe chronic illness, says: “Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties. It was all I could do to get through each moment, and each moment felt like an endless hour, yet days slipped silently past. Time unused and only endured still vanishes, as if time itself is starving, and each day is swallowed whole, leaving no crumbs, no memory, no trace at all.”