Starting from San Francisco. A Life in Writing
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I had this idea that I would not marry until I had established my life work. I wanted the woman I married to know what she was getting, and I wanted her to understand that she was getting something special. I was by now nearing my middle thirties, but I still knew very little about life. I had always been naĂŻve, which my mother was wont to excuse by declaring that I had a “good heart.â€? Alas, it didn't make me less a fool. As I journeyed home from Europe I sensed that the time of my marriage was approaching. But the marriage I made was doomed from the start. When it finally ended I couldn't help but believe that it never should have happened. While it was on and after it was over, its result for me seemed to be nothing but pain, suffering and remorse. But there is no school for marriage but marriage itself, and it was because of my suffering and remorse that I was able to marry Nonny Hogrogian, a woman my age, who was also an artist, and whose ancestry was the same as mine. It was proof of graduation. 26