A broken leg can be remembered and located: “It hurt right below my knee, it throbbed, I felt sick at my stomach.” But mental pain is remembered the way dreams are remembered — in fragments, unbidden realizations, like looking into a well and seeing the dim reflection of your face in that instant before the water shatters.
Things are always darkest just before they go pitch black.
There are now electrical appliances with the main unit so sealed in that it cannot be got at for repair. There have always been human beings like that.
