Well, To Be Honest I

You Get Towards The End Of Life - No, Not Life Itself, But Of Something Else: The End Of Any Likelihood Of Change In That Life. You Are Allowed A Long Moment Of Pause, Time Enough To Ask The Question: What Else Have I Done Wrong?

Not Merely Hope, But Any Burdensome Yearning: Ambition, Hatred, Love (especially Love) - How Rarely Do Our Emotions Meet The Object They Seem To Deserve? How Hopelessly We Signal; How Dark The Sky; How Big The Waves. We Are All Lost At See, Washed Between Hope And Despair, Hailing Something That May Never Come To Rescue Us. Catastrophe Has Become Art; But This Is No Reducing Process. It Is Freeing, Enlarging, Explaining. Catastrophe Has Become Art: That Is, After All, What It Is For.

Paris Is Certainly One Of The Most Boastful Of Cities, And You Could Argue That It Has Had A Lot To Boast About: At Various Times The European Centre Of Power, Of Civilisation, Of The Arts, And (self-advertisingly, At Least) Of Love.

Yes, Of Course We Were Pretentious -- What Else Is Youth For?

Grief Reconfigures Time, Its Length, Its Texture, Its Function: One Day Means No More Than The Next, So Why Have They Been Picked Out And Given Separate Names?