July 6
Tell me, where have they gone, the beauties once so praised? And where, where is last year's snow?
The Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Tell me, where have they gone, the beauties once so praised? And where, where is last year's snow?
Some things disappear without a farewell. A name that everyone knew for a while, a turn of phrase that cropped up in every other conversation, a place everyone went to. When you notice later that nobody talks about it anymore, you can hardly say when it stopped. There was no last day, only a series of days on which it no longer came up.
A loss with a date you can mourn. A fading you barely notice while it is happening. And you took part in it: you too stopped saying the name at some point, without ever deciding to.
At the same time, much returns in kind. New names are praised, new phrases do the rounds, and they seem just as lasting. The pattern repeats. The particular does not.
The question of where it has gone presupposes a place. More likely it was simply no longer needed. What you take for granted this year you hardly mention, precisely for that reason. At some point you will not mention it at all, and for a long time you won't notice the difference.
