[...] in situations like this, the first thing I do is develop a strange kind of nostalgia, a nostalgia for something completely unfamiliar to me. It’s not curiosity in the usual sense, by which I mean that I’m not interested in learning details about the people. But there’s a kind of global curiosity, so to speak; curiosity about the workings of a whole system of interpersonal relations, but also about details, though not just any details, and a curiosity about the history, or rather the present-day stories that mingle together in the place. For example, if I spend a few days at a hotel in a seaside town, at some point I’ll discover the activity of some ants and become profoundly, genuinely, passionately interested in where these ants have come from and where they’re going. In the same way, if anyone from that place discusses personal details with anyone else, or asks about their family, using specific names, in no time I’ll be eavesdropping on their conversation, trying not so much to keep hold of the details as to produce a sort of sketch, something like a series of threads or invisible lines that turn into a single line connecting the person who’s talking and the people and places they’re talking about; and I attempt to put together a kind of diagram of the speaker’s life based on those small snippets of information. I don’t manage, of course, and nor is it possible to manage just like that, so I get upset. It gives me that feeling of yearning for something lost, for a world where I’ll never set foot.