Body and daily life
Marie Curie
She took his course
Marie Curie (1867–1934 · Warsaw and Paris) — She took his course.
What actually happened?
1911 was the year both things happened. She was refused admission to the Académie des sciences by a narrow vote, in a campaign that made much of her being a woman and a foreigner; and the press ran a scandal about her private life, with crowds outside her house. In the same year she was awarded a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, and was advised not to come and collect it. She went. The composure that produced the November lecture was not a one-off temperament. It was the same thing, repeatedly.
Catch hold of one thing with an hour and a place
An enormous blank can't be faced directly. What can be faced has a time, a place and a content. It doesn't solve the grief; it gives the day a shape you can put yourself inside.
What can't be said aloud gets written to them
For more than a year she wrote to Pierre in a notebook nobody saw in her lifetime. Said to the living it becomes a request for comfort; said to yourself it becomes analysis. Only addressed to them does the true thing come out.
Put the skill where it's most needed now
In the war she left the laboratory, raised money, fitted vehicles with X-ray equipment, learned to drive and repair them, and took them to the front. Those years are academically almost blank, and were not wasted.
How do I use it today?
When the most important person has gone and life still has to continue, look for one thing in the next few days that has to be done at a set hour in a set place. If there are things you can't say to anyone, ask who they are actually addressed to, and write them to that person. Don't set yourself a date to be better by.
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Lines to keep
It doesn't solve the grief. It gives the day a shape.
Who the letter is addressed to decides what you can write.
Nobody at their worst owes anyone a performance of it.