Moved to another busy intersection

John Nery's blog Newsstand, that is. The new site is here. The look is cleaner and better organized, methinks. A recent post is an Inquirer column on the untimely death — is there ever a timely one? — of a Jesuit friend, Joey Fermin. An excerpt from early in his meditation:

Too young, much too young, many mourners at the wake murmured.  Maybe. Being in the same age group, I would certainly like to think so. But I doubt if “F,” as we called our classmate since high school, would have agreed; a priest for only 10 short years, he knew death’s dearest demographic. Every day is a slaughter of the innocents; to these victims, 46 would have seemed a ripe old age.

“Would have agreed.” “Would have seemed.” In these phrases I hear the wistful music of the conditional. They remind me of a line from the essential Zbigniew Herbert, who wrote, very much in passing, about “the beauty of the subjunctive.”

Thoughtful and elegant, as usual.