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1 IT WAS MY FIRST DAY. I had come the night before, a gray-black and cold night before−as it was expected to be in the middle of January, though I didn't know that at the time−and I could not see anything clearly on the way in from the airport, even
1 IT WAS MY FIRST DAY. I had come the night before, a gray-black and cold night before−as it was expected to be in the middle of January, though I didn't know that at the time−and I could not see anything clearly on the way in from the airport, even though there were lights everywhere. As we drove along, someone would single out to me a famous building, an important street, a park, a 5 bridge that when built was thought to be a spectacle. In a day-dream I used to have, all these places were points of happiness to me; all these places were lifeboats to my small drowning soul, for I would imagine myself entering and leaving them, and just that−entering and leaving over and over again−would see me through a bad feeling I did not have a name for. I only knew it felt a little like sadness but heavier than that. Now that I saw these places, they looked ordinary, dirty, worn down 10 by so many people entering and leaving them in real life, and it occurred to me that I could not be the only person in the world for whom they were a fixture of fantasy. It was not my first bout with the disappointment of reality and it would not be my last. The undergarments that I wore were all new, bought for my journey, and as I sat in the car, twisting this way and that to get a good view of the sights before me, I was reminded of how uncomfortable the new can make you feel. 15 I got into an elevator, something I had never done before, and then I was in an apartment and seated at a table, eating food just taken from a refrigerator. In the place I had just come from, I always lived in a house, and my house did not have a refrigerator in it. Everything I was experiencing−the ride in the elevator, being in an apartment, eating day-old food that had been stored in a refrigerator−was such a good idea that I could imagine I would grow used to it and like 20 it very much, but at first it was all so new that I had to smile with my mouth turned down at the corners. I slept soundly that night, but it wasn't because I was happy and comfortable−quite the