‘It is terrible to desire the end of something,
the absence of something;
desire should belong to life, to presence and not absence.’

From ‘Aftermath’
by Rachel Cusk

We’re supposed to think about the pot of gold when we look at rainbows, right? But when I stepped outdoors after waking the other morning, the sun had just risen and a storm was about to hit, and in that moment between — in that moment as I stood there — the light in the sky grew lurid, and a rainbow appeared.

It is terrible, as Cusk says, to desire the end of something, the absence of something. The rainbow seemed to me, in that moment before fat raindrops began to fall, a symbol of the opposite of that kind of desire. It seemed to me to be the start of everything: of the rain, yes, of course. Of my day. Of the rest of my life.