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# Respiration
- URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/october-5-2021/
- Published: 2021-10-05T17:55:06.000Z
- Updated: 2026-05-13T01:15:27.000Z
- Author: James A. Reeves
- Tags: Notebook

New York City. Sunset: 6:30pm. A new moon. Heavy clouds and damp air, a high of 66 and a low of 57 degrees. My father would have turned 73 today, and I still do not know how to mark days like this, which I suppose is why I work on projects like *[After the End](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/after-the-end/?ref=jamesreeves.co)*: the need for ceremony, for some patchwork kind of faith. This afternoon I went to the museum and sat among the busted statues from antiquity, and I felt so damned lucky that I had the chance to get to know my father in [his last year](http://jamesr323.sg-host.com/the-last-year-of-my-father/?ref=jamesreeves.co), that we were no longer baffled by one another, which is too often the case with fathers and sons. I wish we had more time, and once again I found myself reciting these instructions from Epictetus: *do not say something is lost, only that it is returned*.

Although they were two thousand years old, these broken marble bodies from the Hellenic age felt illustrative of our current moment: an exhausted and fractured dignity amidst the decay of modern living. As I moved through the galleries, I listened to Lawrence English’s *[Observation of Breath](https://hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/lawrence-english-observation-of-breath?ref=jamesreeves.co)*, which captures the respiration of a 132-year-old pipe organ, a sound that reminded me of my father’s machines as the two of us sat in a small room, waiting for a lung. And the sheer miracle of being here, right now, and simply breathing.

[LAWRENCE ENGLISH – Observation of Breath by Lawrence English](https://hallowground.bandcamp.com/album/lawrence-english-observation-of-breath?ref=jamesreeves.co)