It's Easy, After All, Not To Be

I Certainly Believe We All Suffer Damage, One Way Or Another. How Could We Not,except In A World Of Perfect Parents, Siblings, Neighbours, Companions? And Then There Is The Question On Which So Much Depends, Of How We React To The Damage: Whether We Admit It Or Repress It,and How This Affects Our Dealings With Others.some Admit The Damage, And Try To Mitigate It;some Spend Their Lives Trying To Help Others Who Are Damaged; And There Are Those Whose Main Concern Is To Avoid Further Damage To Themselves, At Whatever Cost. And Those Are The Ones Who Are Ruthless, And The Ones To Be Careful Of.

In My Terms, I Settled For The Realities Of Life, And Submitted To Its Necessities: If This, Then That, And So The Years Passed. In Adrian's Terms, I Gave Up On Life, Gave Up On Examining It, Took It As It Came. And So, For The First Time, I Began To Feel A More General Remorse - A Feeling Somewhere Between Self-pity And Self-hatred - About My Whole Life. All Of It. I Had Lost The Friends Of My Youth. I Had Lost The Love Of My Wife. I Had Abandoned The Ambitions I Had Entertained. I Had Wanted Life Not To Bother Me Too Much, And Had Succeeded - And How Pitiful That Was.

But That’s One Advantage Of Fiction, You Can Speed Up Time.

Life Is Like Invading Russia. A Blitz Start, Massed Shakos, Plumes Dancing Like A Flustered Henhouse; A Period Of Svelte Progress Recorded In Ebullient Despatches As The Enemy Falls Back; Then The Beginning Of A Long, Morale-sapping Trudge With Rations Getting Shorter And The First Snowflakes Upon Your Face. The Enemy Burns Moscow And You Yield To General January, Whose Fingernails Are Very Icicles. Bitter Retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually You Fall Beneath A Boy-gunner's Grapeshot While Crossing Some Polish River Not Even Marked On Your General's Map.

As I've Explained To My Wife Many Times, You Have To Kill Your Wife Or Mistress To Get On The Front Page Of The Papers.