My Years With Proust - Day 409

We can sometimes find a person again, but we cannot abolish time.  And so on until the unforeseen day, gloomy as a winter night, when one no longer seeks that girl, or any other, when to find her would actually scare one.  For one no longer feels that one has attractions enough to please, or strength enough to love.  Not, of course, that one is in the strict sense of the word impotent. And as for loving, one would love more than ever.  But one feels that is is too big an undertaking for the little strength one hast left.  Eternal rest has already interposed intervals during which one can neither go out nor even speak.  Setting one's foo t on the right step is an achievement, like bringing off a somersault.  To be seen in such a state by a girl one loves, even if one has kept the features and all the golden locks of one's youth!  One can no longer face the strain of keeping up with the young.  Too bad if carnal desire increases instead of languishing!  One procures for it a woman whom one need make no effort to attract, who will share one's couch for one night only and whom one will never see again.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 913

Proust continues his discussion of the chances of seeing the beautiful woman from the train car again, which slides into a rumination on age (which we began last time).  A few years ago when I was engaged to the lovely young British girl the running joke with my friends was that I was free of the carnal whirlwind.  Well, actually, I was the one who made the statement, which they never for a moment believed, but had no trouble repeating with ironic sincerity.  Still, there will doubtless come a time when I truly am free of the carnal whirlwind, when, as Proust opines, "One can no longer face the strain of keeping up with the young.  Too bad if carnal desire increases instead of languishing!"  Love will still be the same beautiful curse that it has always been - "And as for loving, one would love more than ever."  And that's the tragedy.  You will probably love all the more fiercely because you never know when you will experience your last great love, which, unlike your last house or your last car, is something that you'll desperately miss.