05.25.19

Françoise Gilot, being sick, the world’s most amazing competitive sport, and so on.

The reasons these newsletters have been slowed down are the reasons everything I do, lately, is slowed down: I’m sick, in some vague undefined way, like Alice James or, who knows, pick your favorite hysteric invalid. It is a period that comes with vacillating self-satisfaction and self-dislike. Taking stock of where I was at my most recent birthday, I felt happy with my life, which I think I’ve lived on my own terms so far in ways that I can be proud of.

Then you think—I wish I were thin, or, if not thin, healthy, or, if neither thin nor healthy, strong. Maybe a life lived on its own terms is selfish. Maybe I should adopt a child. Maybe I should give away my dog since I’m too sick often to take him on long walks. (Don’t ask how these two thoughts are compatible.) Maybe I should… and so on. Much dissatisfaction at a body that doesn’t do what you want, which seems particularly unfair given you and it are in fact the same.

Probably (probably) the being-sick is the long working-out of mono…