I Don't Believe In God, But I

How Often Do We Tell Our Own Life Story? How Often Do We Adjust, Embellish, Make Sly Cuts? And The Longer Life Goes On, The Fewer Are Those Around To Challenge Our Account, To Remind Us That Our Life Is Not Our Life, Merely The Story We Have Told About Our Life. Told To Others, But — Mainly — To Ourselves.

Novels Tell Us The Most Truth About Life: What It Is, How We Live It, What It Might Be For, How We Enjoy And Value It, And How We Lose It.

But I’ve Been Turning Over In My Mind The Question Of Nostalgia, And Whether I Suffer From It. I Certainly Don’t Get Soggy At The Memory Of Some Childhood Knickknack; Nor Do I Want To Deceive Myself Sentimentally About Something That Wasn’t Even True At The Time—love Of The Old School, And So On. But If Nostalgia Means The Powerful Recollection Of Strong Emotions—and A Regret That Such Feelings Are No Longer Present In Our Lives—then I Plead Guilty.

In Those Days, We Imagined Ourselves As Being Kept In Some Kind Of Holding Pen, Waiting To Be Released Into Our Lives. And When The Moment Came, Our Lives -- And Time Itself -- Would Speed Up. How Were We To Know That Our Lives Had In Any Case Begun, That Some Advantage Had Already Been Gained, Some Damage Already Inflicted? Also, That Our Release Would Only Be Into A Larger Holding Pen, Whose Boundaries Would Be At First Undiscernible.

He Didn’t Really Like Travel, Of Course. He Liked The Idea Of Travel, And The Memory Of Travel, But Not Travel Itself.