The Rocks

The likelihood of meeting anyone who wouldn't make him feel even lonelier seemed increasingly remote. Life was a dwindling process now, not a building proposition. He couldn't imagine being with someone new, opening up, feeling appreciated and understood, without having to explain his dubious non sequiturs and increasingly arcane or redundant frame of reference.

Once someone loses trust, that’s it, Gerald. It’s gone. It’s broken. You can’t repair it with explanations. You can’t wheedle trust back from someone.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you are destined for. But do not hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you are old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you have gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you would not have set out. . .

And the seasons, as now, reliably made everything new again. He liked to remember Goethe’s line: “A man can stand anything but a succession of ordinary days.

and male company in Mireille’s neurasthenic