My own madeleine

There used to be a different blog post here.




And I used to think what I wrote here was protected, that it might be good or bad, but that it could not do or go wrong. But it went wrong here and all it took was my looking away. All it took was forgetting that all of this, all 1,800 or so blog posts, that you may or may not have read, are real.

I'm just saying these matter. And things that matter, misused, are dangerous.

What used to be here? Something that was supposed to be pretty and grand. It was about food and a lovely night with my wife in Paris, but trying so hard to tell it and be big and important and beautiful, trying so hard to make of it a great towering confection of words, I walked into it like a piece of fiction, like I could do anything with it. So I made lavish noises about Proust, and wine and the streets and smells and the waiter and the chef and food and epiphany and love, and I got all taken with how grand it was.

But I forgot to taste it. I never tasted it.

I can taste it now. It tastes like ashes.

It was never real.

Here is the real story:


Once upon a time I went to Paris with my one true love. And there were pretty paintings and wonderful foods, lovely things to see and interesting things to do.

But I could take or leave everything, everywhere, there and in all the infinities of all the universes,

except for her.