Back home (one of my two homes) after three and a half months again felt peculiar. Forgot where a lot of things were. Looking all over the place for this or for that. This never happened years ago. I’m not sure the brain deteriorates. Perhaps it just gets more selective. Up to a certain age you remember everything, because everything seems to you vitally important, and your head is empty anyway—my grand mother’s telephone number, for instance, the first one I ever dialed by myself. More and more after that you remember selectively. My theory, anyway. More and more you choose not to remember things at all, without even knowing you are doing it. Or you write it down so you don’t have to remember it, can chase it out of your head at once. Where do we keep the garbage bags? Well, you can’t write that down. The laundry basket must be in a closet. Which one? If we had been living here uninterruptedly we would have been tripping over such things and wouldn’t have to ask. The hardest for me to remember is all the new electronic stuff. New stuff almost every day. Basically, I think this is because I resent the whole idea. Resent having to learn it. It’s like learning Latin vocabulary in high school. It relates to nothing, and it’s emotionally painful. I thought I was over all that, being forced to learn something that is that alien to me and to my life. I’m back in school again and I don’t like it.
Gotta stop. Lots of small chores to do, mail to answer, calls to make. I’m excited to be here, although God knows I was happy in Nice too. I like change, I guess, and will put up with Delta for it. I’m married to change.