Am reading The Goldfinch again. It’s been a few years since i read it last, and a lot of things have happened; so i’m curious how it seems now.

Stories are like mirrors, and i like to see how reflected things look when i look — how my life and the world around me appear, and how that’s changed over time.

And i’m haunted by the ghost of my wife’s last cat, Ojo. I have these recurring feelings of guilt (like when i get home from being out, or when i wake up) that i’ve neglected him — not fed him, cleaned his litter box, etc. Or i have a generalized guilt, that somehow my getting tired of feeding him through the night and cleaning up after him year after year — guilt that it contributed somehow to his death. I know it really didn’t contribute; but i still come home and go to check on how he’s doing, or i say good night to him when I’m turning out the lights at night. I miss the little guy.

I guess that by writing about it, i don’t feel so bad. Maybe misplaced feelings of guilt over Ojo are just my way of feeling guilty over Sandi dying.

Could be.

The Goldfinch is clearly a post-9/11 novel, with a lot of existential guilt & self-questioning going on throughout the story. Maybe my own feelings of guilt for being the only survivor of the “Cornell Gorge Suicides” phenomenon make the story particularly appealing to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_gorge_suicides?wprov=sfti1#