So here we are in “the very world, which is the world / Of all of us,—the place where, in the end, / We find our happiness, or not at all!” I thought something like this at the Chinese restaurant two weeks ago, while I waited for my takeout. Staring at the sad live fish just lying around the tank, not doing anything, not really enjoying themselves, I thought, Listen, fishies, this is it. It’s not going to get better. Make the most of it.

Wordsworth said it better, if in a slightly different context.

Our own fish, Tyler, has left us. Well, he hasn’t left us, left us. He’s still lying under some rocks at the bottom of his bowl. But he’s dead. I’m feeling squeamish about the actual flushing. I want David around for this.

We saw a fantastic movie the other night. I don’t know if you’ll ever see it, since it is French and obscure and was only on TCM for a Louis Malle festival they had a few weeks ago. It's called Place de la République and in it Malle took a small crew to the place and asked people questions and filmed them. You could look at the film as an argument that every day everyone, by which I mean me and possibly you, should go out and film a stranger. The people he talks to are so happy to be noticed, to be captured, to be made monumental. And shouldn’t they be noticed? Shouldn’t they be made to feel even as they loiter, buy lottery tickets, worry about their illnesses and mourn the people they have lost, that they are important? Sorry, I’m back to Wordsworth again, to the idea, which Malle is working with also—at the end, over footage of a woman who has lost her mind, he runs a quotation, not Wordsworth, about enjoying the life that can be taken from us at any point—that existence is valuable in itself, and that a radical purposelessness, a failure to make of things more than what they are, is in fact a great success.

For the first several days of any vacation, I think, What’s vacation for? That’s how much fun I am to be with.

But I’m even more fun before vacation starts. Five days, maybe six, if you’re lucky, and sometimes people are very lucky, I know my husband considers himself (he’s said this) the luckiest man on the face of the Earth, before we leave I become, what’s the word? totally anxious about everything that I ever had to do or will have to do until the end of time. What about the children? is a thing I think to myself. They will have school in three weeks. What am I going to pack for Henry’s lunch? How will I ever get the doctor to sign their medical forms? How will I convince her to do this? And money! We might not have enough! David, do we have enough money? He says What? and rolls over. Also: Did I really graduate from law school? I never got my diploma in the mail, it’s true. On the other hand, the school communicated with the Bar and I couldn’t have passed the Bar if I didn’t graduate and I did pass the Bar. And yet those dreams that I have another paper to write are so convincing. Speaking of dreams, and writing, and all that, all that good stuff, Did I spend the last six years writing a shit novel? I hope not! Body hair. I must have it removed. Am I inappropriate with the children? Was Mom tense on the phone with me? What did Dad mean when he said that thing the other day? And what about the laundry and I have to get to the drug store and are we renting car seats? Aha! That’s it! Those things are vacation things. I’m tense about vacation! Relief floods through me, my husband is grasped around the middle and lifted into the air, the children are kissed all over their ears, because they've turned their heads from me. Vacation! Not my whole fucking life. Thank God. Now I can go lie on the sofa and put off packing until the last possible minute.

I’m not leaving tomorrow, by the way, I’ll be here tomorrow, but after that you’ll have to win your own round-robins and threaten your own children and wish you were somewhere else, on your own. You won’t have me to do it for you. You’ll have to make your own half-assed references to other people’s art. Maybe this will be good for you. Maybe this is just the kind of thing you need. I think it is, actually. You’re lazy, and you’re soft.