You are getting older. Don't do anything about it.

It has begun.
The ennui.
It settles and looks like fine dust and a very dull headache and sunlight, the ugly kind. I keep "forgetting" to take showers. I eat a meal at one in the morning. I sleep till one in the afternoon. I budget, and plan, and do things halfheartedly and haphazardly. The light and the heat make me think of sex.
It might be even harder with Lovely Things on the horizon. They're taunting in their far-awayness. More pressing is the Money, for this is the artist's first encounter with the weight of paper. Meaning, I need 400 euro for my travel plans. SOS.
I just finished these two surprisingly similar (theme-wise, anyways) non-fiction memoirs. One was "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", by Joan Didion. Pause for a minute and say her name a few times. It's a very good name. The second book was Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast". Pertinently, "Slouching..." is a kind of massive metaphor for the end of the Hippie Movement, in tandem with Joan's own disillusionment with a lot of things. It's also happy, and about where and how she comes to find peace in her native California. The ending essay, though, (called GOODBYE TO ALL THAT) is horribly striking as its about her outgrowing New York. After I read it, I watched some Sex and the City episodes. Wondered if I would ever outgrow New York. Then, I thought about beauty. You see, I'm also reading "The Unbearable Lightness of Being".
New York, I think, is very beautiful.
Ernest (we're on a first-name basis) was maybe even more immediately pertinent, because "A Moveable Feast" is an account of his early years in Paris with Hadley. And Gertrude Stein. And F. Scott. The whole memoir is so drenched in nostalgia. My favorite essay ended with this beautiful beautiful beautiful line about him and Hadley planning their day, and realizing that despite their poverty they were very happy anyways, very very happy. PARAPHRAZZED: "We ought to have knocked on wood. The whole apartment was full of it, but we didn't knock on wood for luck." And just...isn't that sad? Here goes the world, whizzing past your ears. Like a gnat. Like a summer afternoon.
And then I spoke to a woman who had just had a baby, who maybe wanted to hire me to take care of it. She offered to drive me home after the interview even though I'd taken the Metro. When we were in the car she confided, "I never thought I'd see the day when going to the grocery store or leaving the house for twenty minutes was like...freedom." I can see it. I could see it in their piles of books and their bold, modern color scheme and that silly, laughable way he held his baby, a way I'm certain Dr. Spock might have corrected had he been present. She's writing her dissertation, this particular Mom. And I pictured it! I pictured writing an opus and I knew for certain I could do it. I pictured always regretting never going to a singing audition. I pictured young months, years, in Paris, in California, I pictured being in love, and could not even worry about its imminent, impending closeness (which implies its imminent, impending end). I raise fret-blistered fingers upwards to try to snatch at things that look like tools.

You see, I think a year ago I would have just read "A Moveable Feast" or "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and thought they were very sad and depressing and just left it at that. I might also have thought they were romantic, but so incredibly distant in their romance. The whole thought sequence would likely have ended ultimately with me feeling sorry for myself, and my lame life and my lame habit. This woman writing her dissertation, and this husband unsure how to carry a squirming baby, they would have seemed far far away as well.

I listen to that song "Time" by Pink Floyd, and cannot explain to anyone else why I think it's actually kind of optimistic (it isn't. I am wrong).

No, no, here it is.
I never used to read non-fiction.