“I practiced for many years the exercise of recapturing that epiphanic moment, and I would always find again the same plenitude. I would slip into it as into a fragment of time devoid of duration—without beginning, middle, or end. During my last years in L.A., when I struggled with profound attacks of melancholy, I still succeeded at times in returning to the golden-green light of that afternoon, the naive ocean...But even though the beatitude was the same, it was now impossible to bear because it aggravated me too much. Imagination is lessening the tremendous plague. Despite some failures of vision and nerve, they fly or fall on its own merits.” I have to admit that I felt ill at ease, even a bit miserable. So I said, “Every night before I fall asleep I stare at my favorite painting”
