I could not understand why things I was saying and that in the past had proved so attractive were now suddenly so irritating. I could not understand why, having not changed myself, I should now be accused of being offensive in a hundred different ways. Panicking, I embarked on an attempt to return to the golden age, asking myself, “What did I do then that I perhaps am not doing now?” I became a desperate conformist to a past self that had been the object of love. What I failed to realize was that the past self was the one now proving so annoying, and that I was therefore doing nothing but
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