I was pretty certain that he believed me. That’s the advantage of being twenty years older than someone: They don’t know your past. And even if they ask you a couple of distracted questions about what your life has been up until that point, you can make it up completely. A new life. They’re not going to go and check. As you tell of this imaginary life, great breaths of fresh air rush across a closed room in which you have been unable to breathe for a long time. A window abruptly opens, the shutters bang in the breeze. You have, once again, a future before you.

An art publisher. It came to me without even thinking. If I had been asked what I was going to be when I was older, some twenty years ago, I would have mumbled: an art publisher. And well, today I said it. Nothing has changed. All of those years are done and gone.