Inside-Out Portrait

Inexperience is a quality of the human condition. We are born one time only; we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we’ve gained from a previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is; we marry without knowing what it is to be married; and even when we enter old age, we don’t know what it is we’re heading for: The old are innocent children of their old age. In that sense, man’s world is the planet of inexperience.

We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can’t have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we’re so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they’re not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. … Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it’ll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you’re living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute.

And I want to be held down. I don’t know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.

Oh, love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.