I was growing old. My accumulating discontent with posing [as an artist's model] was really only part of my general state of mind.
It was as though I had been climbing a hill in expectation of finding on the other side a landscape utterly different from the one through which I had passed. Now I was at the summit. I could see that what stretched ahead was exactly the same as what lay behind. For an introvert his environment is himself and can never be subject to startling or unforeseen change. My failures to win true love, to stay in the movie industry, to write books that anyone would publish were not a series of unconnected accidents to which I was prone because of my exposed position in society. They were the expression of my character — the built-in concomitant of a morbid nature to which dreams were more vivid than reality. The infinitesimally small success that I had known had been achieved inevitably in terms of being rather than of doing. I had gained what I had aimed for when I first gained control of my own life. But in middle age physical well-being faded. Money, fame, wisdom, which are the booby prizes of the elderly, I had never been able to win. My preoccupation with happiness had been total.
I would not yet have described myself as miserable but I was deflated. I realized that the future was past. Whatever I could hope to do or say or be, I had done and said and been. This state of affairs occurred prematurely because I had subjected a shallow and horribly articulate personality to a lifetime of unflagging scrutiny. Even a marriage with oneself may not last forever.
The Naked Civil Servant (1968)
Use the link below to read an article about British author, raconteur and actor QUENTIN CRISP (1908–1999):
https://glreview.org/quentin-crisp-the-loneliest-man-i-ever-met/
You might also enjoy:
Think About It 073: BRAD BIGELOW
Think About It 066: AMBROSE BIERCE
Think About It 054: DOROTHY ROWE
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