It is almost summer, a few days before the school holidays, when everyone who can leaves Paris. We are having lunch outside with my friend J. I tell him I am going to drop my project on touch and the intangible, or rather, enlarge it. Instead of ruminating on my problem with skin, my fear of being touched, I would do “Twelve Months of Fear,” with twelve videos playing with phobias. I had only done two at that time.

J. looks at me and asks, “Will you have enough material?”

Alternatively, he says, “Only twelve? I would think there are many more. Look: vertigo, claustrophobia, crowds, water; and boats, trains, planes; and animals, snakes, spiders, rats, mice, dogs, cats; and horses, of course; and blood, mutilation, amputation, tongue piercing, broken nails; and dentists; and scissors, knives, meat, scallops, oysters, Brussel sprouts. My great aunt, she could not see someone eating Brussel sprouts without feeling sick. It is endless.”

In both cases, I smile confidently. I answer, “Yes, twelve videos, a year is a year, then I will be done.”

A long time ago, I had a Serbian girlfriend. It was in the States, and we spoke in English. She was a psychiatrist, and had emigrated some years earlier. She still had a strange accent, worse than mine. I forgot what we were talking about. Maybe there was just a dog wandering on the sidewalk, and I tried to cross the street despite the traffic so as to avoid the beast. Out of the blue, she cried, “Pierre, you have so many phobias!” At the time, I was seeing a therapist. A bit of a charlatan but quite Freudian. He believed that all my phobias were related to vertigo, a central fear of height, which itself expressed a fear of standing up. A fear of erection. I told her. She said, “I very much doubt so.”

I was very pleased.

In the end, talking of my fear always makes me feel better.

October. The weather is still sunny and warm. These are the very last days which may still be said to be beautiful. The sidewalks of the boulevard are covered with dead leaves that passing cars send flying into the air. I am having lunch in a café with my friend E. He tells me he has started pottery classes. Working with his hands on a material makes him feel better. And he thought he would be awful but he is not. I remember my attempt at windsurfing last summer. I get into a long tirade about how when you grow older, you accept having to negotiate. Before, I'd have thought, I'll be stronger than this stupid wind, I'll break it. In all likelihood, the wind would have won. But I would not have negotiated. That is why I was so clumsy.

E. replies, sadly, “It is nice to think one gains something by growing older.”