FOREIGN AFFAIRS BY ALISON LURIE:

CONTRE-JOUR

"I have written down two questions for myself. Did I ever tell you? Questions I thought I ought to answer. What do we want out of life that makes us so dissatisfied with whatever is given?

And: who is to blame for these wants of ours?

I thought if they were down in front of me in black and white it would be easier to answer them. I thought I would simply sit here till they were answered, and then I would know.

I have always been able to solve problems. There is no problem that, once formulated, cannot be solved. That is perhaps the one thing he taught me. Not in so many words, but by example. If there is a problem, there is a solution. If we don't find a solution that means we don't want to, and that means it was not really a problem in the first place.

Well, I have found the answers. What we want out of life is what we obscurely sense has to be our due. And no one is to blame either for the desires themselves or for their frustration.

I have found the answers, but they have not been worth anything at all. Perhaps that is the difference between art and life."

"I say: there are terrible things going on in the world. But it is not my task to deal with those things. It is not even my task to cry over all that is happening, in desert and forest, village and city, in the open plain and behind the hedge. That is not my task. My task is simple, I tell him. I have a responsibility towards one person. I cannot turn aside from that."

"It is lovely to lie in the bath with the windows open and the curtains blowing in the breeze and know he is at work next door. I hear nothing but I just what he is doing, just how he is looking. Sometimes when he is tired he comes into the bathroom and sits on the chair, not saying anything, watching the curtains move and the steam rise up to the ceiling, flatten and come billowing down again. When I step out he reaches for his pad and starts to sketch again. Sometimes I resent this, sometimes I wish he would go away. But when he is not there I miss him. When he is not sketching me I wonder if I am really there."

- Contre-Jour, Gabriel Josipovici

Finished reading A visit from the goon squad by Jennifer Egan yesterday.