My Year of Rest and Relaxation

The Death of Marat was one of my favorite paintings. A man stabbed to death in the bathtub.

Die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Who said that?

I had no big plan to become a curator, no great scheme to work my way up a ladder. I was just trying to pass the time.

Walking up First Avenue, everything made me cringe. I was like a baby being born—the air hurt, the light hurt, the details of the world seemed garish and hostile.

Law & Order

But I looked like an off-duty model

I prayed that my subconscious understood the value of convenience. Amen.

I didn’t talk to myself in my head. There wasn’t much to say. This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I’d disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was the dream.

Outside of the occasional irritation, I had no nightmares, no passions, no desires, no great pains.

Your problem is that you’re passive. You wait around for things to change, and they never will. That must be a painful way to live. Very disempowering,”