France is herself Only in the winter, her naked self, without manners. In the fine weather, all the world can… — James Salter

The myriad past, it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds, exist the fragments that refuse to be consumed. Sifting through, if one dares, and collecting them, one discovers the true design.

''The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four -the years turn dry as leaves.'

Solitude. One knows instinctively it has benefits that must be more deeply satisfying than those of other conditions, but still it is difficult.