Getting Lost

by Annie Ernaux

For me, words set down on paper to capture the thoughts and sensations of a given moment are as irreversible as time—are time itself.

Which is truer, desire or guilt?

The only thing that matters to me is to seize life and time, understand, and take pleasure.

It is no proof of love, which naturally can’t be proven.

Michelangelo’s David, the sublime body in its very slightly oblique pose. Wonderful hands, so strong, embodying David’s pure strength. Every muscle, every joint, the exact spot where the hip is outthrust, ever so slightly, all of it for me sings the praises of the male body, made divine by the brilliant sculptor.

Knowledge is always liberating.

Voglio vivere una favola.

(Michel Foucault: the highest good is to make one’s life a work of art).

To explain a life, you’d also need to have everything that influenced a person, all that they had read; and even then something remains concealed that cannot be exposed.