On destiny, Adorno and Sebald:

‘Angier accepts the coroner’s view. ‘He didn’t choose that death ... But when it came to him that way, it was what he’d always thought coincidence was: destiny.’ This is a wonderful way of opening a closed case. The thought echoes a line from Adorno’s Minima Moralia, one of Sebald’s favourite books. ‘Psychology knows that he who imagines disasters in some way desires them. But why do they come so eagerly to meet him?’ We have to allow for the irony in ‘psychology knows’, and of course Adorno is not really asking why disasters behave in the way they do or why they are so eager (eifrig). But then what is he asking? There are many questions here: about coincidence and destiny, including our fascination with the first and our curious allegiance to the second.’

Read the essay here.

The imagination always reveals or hides a (strong) desire, but imagination is also an incantation. The things you imagine are the things that won’t happen.