The Years

by Annie Ernaux

She’s given up trying to deduce this form that is able to contain her life from the sensation she has on the beach with her eyes closed or in a hotel room, that sense of replicating herself and physically existing in several places she’s known over her life, and thus attaining a palimpsest time. So far, the sensation has not taken her anywhere in writing or any field of knowledge. Like the minutes after orgasm, it creates the desire to write, nothing more.