Laudator Temporis Acti

Moritz Thomsen (1915-1991), The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey on Two Rivers (Saint Paul: Graywolf Press, 1990), p. 11:

I am sixty-three, white haired, not very well preserved. I have become that person who is of no interest to anyone and about whom no one will have the slightest curiosity. I have become for all intents and purposes invisible.

Id., p. 17:

I have become as strange to myself as that range of mountains that I am looking at for the first time. I detect vast new capacities for impatience, resentful anger, and cynicism.

Id., p. 20:

What I know now in a sudden rush is that that old world has gone; things have changed way past my capacity to understand or accept. I am like some Rip Van Winkle who has awakened and wandered into a present that fills him with confusion and despair.

Id., p. 52:

I catch sight of a stern figure staring at me from the mirrors of storefronts. Amazed, I peer closely, for it is someone I scarcely recognize. I am not happy with his bag of flesh that so ineptly translates my qualities. No one, I decide, would want to talk to that old fart.