Mortality

You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.

As against that, the humor is a touch feeble and repetitive, there seems to be almost no talk of sex, and the cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited.

In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

But, as with the normal life, one finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less.

for a staggering, almost punishing memory that held up under the most liquid of late-night conditions.

For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.

Apparently, one of the symptoms by which it is made known is that a tough veteran will say, seeking to make light of his experience, that “what didn’t kill me made me stronger.” This is one of the manifestations that “denial” takes.

his great turbine of a mind,

Also, ordinary expressions like “expiration date”… will I outlive my Amex? My driver’s license? People say—I’m in town on Friday: will you be around? WHAT A QUESTION!