Chapter 49
October 28
Shame on Me
My life is like a stroll upon the beach,
As near the ocean’s edge as I can go.
Henry David Thoreau, “My Life Is Like a Stroll upon the Beach”
We don’t even know where “real life” is lived nowadays, or what it is, what name it goes by. . . . We are born dead, and moreover we have long ceased to be the sons of living fathers. . . . But that’s enough; I shall write no more from the underground.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
I TOOK A WALK around the rim of the island at dawn, walking along the sand, with my shoes off, in the lapping water, through the stones, pebbles, and broken shells. The water was cold now, but I wanted to walk in it, as I used to do on summer mornings, in the inch of water at the edge of the island, where I leave no footprints, because I had decided that this would be the last time I did so. Before I went back inside the hotel I stopped and just stood there for a little while, with the wavelets lapping in over my numb feet, the morning sunlight skipping on the water, and the breeze shaking me by the shoulders and asking me whether life could possibly be better than this.
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