I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are excit… - Anne Carson

As Sokrates tells it, your story begins the moment Eros enters you. That incursion is the biggest risk of your life. How you handle it is an index of the quality, wisdom and decorum of the things inside you. As you handle it you come into contact with what is inside you, in a sudden and startling way. You perceive what you are, what you lack, what you could be. What is this mode of perception, so different from ordinary perception that it is well described as madness? How is it that when you fall in love you feel as if suddenly you are seeing the world as it really is? A mood of knowledge floats out over your life. You seem to know what is real and what is not. Something is lifting you toward an understanding so complete and clear it makes you jubilant. This mood is no delusion, in Sokrates’ belief. It is a glance down into time, at realities you once knew, as staggeringly beautiful as the glance of your beloved (249e-50c).

And now time is rushing towards them
where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces, night at their back.

Friends disappear
or they are powerless.
This is what misfortune means
an acid test of friendship.
I wouldn't wish it on anyone.