Green Linden Press

from Touché

To stop bragging that you don’t understand a bit of Joyce and have never read a single line of Mallarmé.

To get down to work with no ambition and no guilt.

To listen to music without dissolving into listening to music.

To be inspired by everyone and no one.

To stop forcing yourself to make small talk with cab drivers.

To abandon all your manias.

To abolish your superstitions.

To never take inspiration from Baudelaire’s dandy: The idle Hercules who astonishes everyone while refusing to be astonished himself.

To stop finding excuses for vanity.

To stop trying to make your life resemble a biography—it’s too late, and it wouldn’t be an interesting one anyway.

To stop measuring yourself against everyone whose biography you’ve ever read.

To stick to your plans, resolutions, and desires.

To finish, every day, yesterday’s to-do list.

To adopt Pasteur’s point of view and think that a day passed without working amounts to theft.

To try, like Descartes, to determine whether there are animals on the moon, how avalanches work, and the structure of snowflakes.

To be suspicious of anyone who claims to only want to do you good.

To seek the intelligence of secrecy rather than that of clarity. Without really knowing what that means.

To be guided in all endeavors by Bismarck’s maxim: In politics, as in everything else, follow the straight path because you’re sure to have it all to yourself.

To accept being so deeply affected that it alters your capacity to be affected.

To manage to distinguish between an inevitable need and an invented need.

To not always imagine the worst.

To free yourself from grieving and forget your childhood.

To stop repeating, every morning, I won’t have time today—I’ll do it tomorrow.

To stop hating vacations.

To change your glasses regularly to keep up with your declining eyesight and to get used to progressive lenses.

To count, bitterly, your various falls and injuries.

To pay your rent every month, savoring the sense of satisfaction, of a duty done, and a temporary security.

To leave houses and people without grief and without regret.

To not think I won’t be coming back each time you leave someone—it’s too sad.

To finally learn to love leaving and so no longer fear coming back.

The most-translated line of Chateaubriand is Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven. The most cited in video games and movies: Long and difficult is the road that leads from hell to the light.

To have the fleeting feeling while driving up the rue du Sénégal in Belleville that you’re hiking in the mountains. Particularly when, after slamming on the brakes to avoid a pedestrian, you have to start up again on the steep slope, which always means beginning by going backward.

To despise and curse all who, when you admit that you’re superstitious, reply, Me, not at all—they say it brings bad luck.

To suddenly, while a bit drunk, declare to all your loved ones how absolutely you love them.

To be able to say with perfect sincerity: Oh no, I’m not sad at all; in fact, I’m actually a very happy person.

(from Touché, forthcoming from Green Linden Press)