My solution has been to scroll through my life, my thoughts, my fantasies, my memories, mis-memories, and the like until I have chanced upon events, people, or narratives that I can employ to divert my mind from the body in which it is encased. These mental exercises have to be interesting enough to hold my attention and see me through an intolerable itch in my inner ear or lower back; but they also have to be boring and predictable enough to serve as a reliable prelude and encouragement to sleep. It took me some time to identify this process as a workable alternative to insomnia and physical discomfort and it is by no means infallible. But I am occasionally astonished, when I reflect upon the matter, at how readily I seem to get through, night after night, week after week, month after month, what was once an almost insufferable nocturnal ordeal. I wake up in exactly the position, frame of mind, and state of suspended despair with which I went to bed—which in the circumstances might be thought a considerable achievement.

When there is someone attractive in my bed.

The studio. I work late.

All of the anxious thoughts that you are able to escape during the day that somehow know when you are lying down to relax.

More than I can, sadly. I led the softest of lives in the softest of times, and my daughter will face sterner challenges.

In 1993, making love on the beach of a deserted island in the Bahamas.

First loved, then laid, then paid.

Do the secret thing you know you were born to do.

“Try this, you’ll love it.”

A painting by Renoir, paid for by demanding a huge fee for a screenwriting deal with a producer I didn’t want to work for. The movie was never made.