How dead people are like cats

Dead people are like cats in that you can free associate with them, and they won’t turn away no matter what you say (although cats are prone to interrupt a full hour before mealtime).

My blog is about as close as I come to free association. Yet, more is always possible, and so I tend to write about the same things.

P.S . The portrait is from 1866 and was made by Julia Cameron of Julia Jackson whose only claims to fame are that she was Virginia Woof's mother and Julia Cameron's favorite photographic subject. 

There's an erotic exoticism of the deepest sort about the past, especially when it's remote enough that all those people, who were once so alive, have long since been consumed by worms. How can I reconcile myself to the beauty that has been lost, even the beauty that no eye ever witnessed?