I have not forgotten those days, I have only forgotten how simply they seemed to occur … - James Salter

In youth it feels one's concerns are everyone's. Later on it is clear that they are not. Finally they again become the same. We are all poor in the end. The lines have been spoken. The stage is empty and bare.

Before that, however, is the performance.

The curtain rises.

But like Conrad's shipmates on the Narcissus, I never saw any of them again.

LIFE IS WEATHER. LIFE IS MEALS. Lunches on a blue checked cloth on which salt has spilled. The smell of tobacco. Brie, yellow apples, wood-handled knives.