We Live Beyond Hope

We live. We continue to live. Despite it all. I thought it was most beautifully encapsulated by Prior Walter in Angels in America (yes, that again, I can't help it, if I love something, I love it...I soak in it until my fingers get pruny).

So here is the excerpt. From Angels in America. Towards the end. When Prior meets the angels. And returns The Book.

Europa: This is the Tome of Immobility, of respite, of cessation.
Drink of its bitter water once, Prophet, and never thirst again.

(Prior puts the Book on the table. He removes his prophet robes, revealing the hospital gown underneath. He places the robe by the Book.)

Prior: I...can't.
I still want...My blessing. Even sick. I want to be alive.

Angel: You only think you do.
Life is a habit with you.
You have not seen what is to come:
We have.
What will the grim Unfolding of these Latter Days bring?
That you or any Being should wish to endure them?
Death more plenteous than all Heaven has tears to mourn in.
The slow dissolving of the Great Design,
The spiraling apart of the Work of Eternity
The World and all its beautiful particle logic
All collapsed. All dead, forever,
In starless, moonlorn, onyx night.

(The generator begins to fail, the lights to dim.)

Angel: We are failing, failing,
The Earth and the Angels.
Look up, look up,
It is Not-to-Be Time.
On who asks of the Orders Blessing
With Apocalypse Descending?
Who demands: More Life?
When Death like a Protector
Blinds our eyes, shielding from tender nerve
More horror than can be borne.
Let any Being on whom Fortune smiles
Creep away to Death
Before that last dreadful daybreak
When all your ravaging returns to you
With the rising, scorching, unrelenting Sun:
When morning blisters crimson
And bears all life away,
A tidal wave of Protean Fire
That curls around the planet
And bares the Earth clean as bone.

(Pause.)

Prior: But still. Still.
Bless me anyway.
I want more life. I can't help myself. I do.
I've lived through such terrible times, and there are people who live through much much worse, but... You see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay their eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, the live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die. But I recognize the habit. The addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it. that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough, so inadequate but... Bless me, anyway. I want more life.

(Prior begins to exit. The Angels, unseen by him, make a mystical sign. He turns again to face them.)

Prior: And if He returns, take Him to court. He walked out on us. He ought to pay.