We label the feelings of our childhood with the names we learn as adults and brightly, confidently, refer to that old \u201canguish\u201d or \u201cdespair\u201d or \u201celation.\u201d The confidence of liars. For those words meant nothing to us then; what we lacked as children was precisely the power to designate and dismiss, and when we describe the emotions of one age with the language of another, we are merely applying stickers to locked trunks, calling \u201cfragile\u201d or \u201cperishable\u201d contents that, even were we to view them again, would be unrecognizable.<\/strong> We label the feelings of our childhood with the names we learn as adults and brightly, confidently, refer to that old \u201canguish\u201d or \u201cdespair\u201d or \u201celation.\u201d The confidence of liars. For those words meant nothing to us then; what we lacked as children was precisely the power to designate and dismiss, and when we describe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
\u2013Edmund White, Nocturnes for the King of Naples<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"