A Couple's First Task, It Has Always

I Have An Instinct For Survival, For Self-preservation.

It Took Me Some Years To Clear My Head Of What Paris Wanted Me To Admire About It, And To Notice What I Preferred Instead. Not Power-ridden Monuments, But Individual Buildings Which Tell A Quieter Story: The Artist's Studio, Or The Belle Epoque House Built By A Forgotten Financier For A Just-remembered Courtesan.

He Thought Of Trying To Explain Something He Had Recently Noticed About Himself: That If Anyone Insulted Him, Or One Of His Friends, He Didn't Really Mind--or Not Much, Anyway. Whereas If Anyone Insulted A Novel, A Story, A Poem That He Loved, Something Visceral And Volcanic Occurred Within Him. He Wasn't Sure What This Might Mean--except Perhaps That He Had Got Life And Art Mixed Up, Back To Front, Upside Down.

In My Terms, I Settled For The Realities Of Life, And Submitted To Its Necessities: If This, Then That, And So The Years Passed. In Adrian's Terms, I Gave Up On Life, Gave Up On Examining It, Took It As It Came. And So, For The First Time, I Began To Feel A More General Remorse - A Feeling Somewhere Between Self-pity And Self-hatred - About My Whole Life. All Of It. I Had Lost The Friends Of My Youth. I Had Lost The Love Of My Wife. I Had Abandoned The Ambitions I Had Entertained. I Had Wanted Life Not To Bother Me Too Much, And Had Succeeded - And How Pitiful That Was.

It Strikes Me That This May Be One Of The Differences Between Youth And Age: When We Are Young, We Invent Different Futures For Ourselves; When We Are Old, We Invent Different Pasts For Others.