Foreshadowing
The girl has a textbook of some kind open on the desk in front of her. She pushes some hair back behind her ear in that lovely, heartbreaking way girls do and runs her finger under her eye, wiping an incipient tear. For an instant Matthew considers snatching the vase of flowers from the lobby table and smashing it over Robert’s head. Then he remembers himself as not the sort of person who would do something like that.
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 1
Aging: Effect on Male Ego and Fantasy Life
The girl is on the verge of tears. Matthew loves the way her hair falls over her shoulders, fine and straight, light brown, with a little red in it. For the first time he notices that she has freckles.
Freckles, he says to himself. My God. And he asks himself, How old is this girl? Twenty-two? Eighteen? Twelve? He has no idea. He can’t tell. It occurs to him, just then, that he’s well on his way to becoming an old fart, or a middle-aged fart, anyway. …
The girl puts her elbows on the desk and lets her chin drop into her hands.
“He has no right to talk to you like that,” Matthew says. He wonders if this is a good time to ask her if she’d like to drop in for dinner sometime. …
Matthew thinks again about staying home, just hanging out in the lobby, perhaps, chatting with her, helping her study, sending out for whatever girls her age eat. He pulls his stomach in and stands up a little straighter, is immediately struck by the fact that he thinks it’s necessary to pull his stomach in and stand up a little straighter, and loses his nerve.Reservations Recommended, Chapter 1
My ears catch less and less of conversation, and my eyes have weakened, though they are still insatiable.
I see their legs in miniskirts, slacks, wavy fabrics.
Peep at each one separately, at their buttocks and thighs, lulled by the imaginings of porn.
Old lecher, it’s time for you to the grave, not to the games and amusements of youth.
But I do what I have always done: compose scenes of this earth under orders from the erotic imagination.
It’s not that I desire these creatures precisely; I desire everything, and they are like a sign of ecstatic union.
It’s not my fault that we are made so, half from disinterested contemplation, half from appetite.
If I should accede one day to Heaven, it must be there as it is here, except that I will be rid of my dull senses and my heavy bones.
Changed into pure seeing, I will absorb, as before, the proportions of human bodies, the color of irises, a Paris street in June at dawn, all of it incomprehensible, incomprehensible the multitude of visible things.Czeslaw Milosz, “An Honest Description of Myself with a Glass of Whiskey at an Airport, Let Us Say, in Minneapolis” (translated from the Polish by Robert Hass and Czeslaw Milosz; reprinted in New and Collected Poems 1931–2001)
See also: Foreshadowing TG 63; TG 84; TG 127; TG 128; TG 140; TG 142; TG 147; Aging; Youth and Age; Old People TG 395; Youth and Age TG 36; Wishful Thinking TG 43; TG 91
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies and Herb ’n’ Lorna.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document) and at Encyclopedia.com.