Perhaps this physical decline was inevitable. It’s what he dreaded most: seeing a depleted shape looking back in the mirror, the feeling that he’d lost his chance to create. Could he have done anything to stop it? Could I? To reverse it? The finish line always, eventually, arrives. It has to.

That’s life. It’s the tragedy of life: the end comes for us all. People on the sidewalk pass me by, stepping around me, without eye contact or acknowledgment.

Back home, back on the third floor, I sit inside door 3B to remove my boots. I don’t have the pep to remove my coat or unpack the cart of groceries. My body might be giving up on me, but my mind has been less depleted by age. I can still think. I know what day of the week it is, the season. I can converse with strangers while standing in line at the store if need be. I’m grateful for the compromise. That’s what has always worried me most. Cognitive decline. Fading memories. Lost days. An uncertain present.

I walk over to the bookshelf, looking for a specific book. When I find it, I remove it from the shelf and take it over to my chair. Surrealism by Herbert Read. I flip to a page marked with a napkin. I read aloud a sentence at random.

“ ‘The Surrealist movement was a revolution directed at every sphere of life, encompassing politics and poetry as well as art, its purpose the liberation of resources of the subconscious mind….’ ”

Art and surrealism encompassed my life, too. More than anything else. I loved this book when I bought it.

I was so excited to get home and read it. The ideas in it felt so alive to me, connected to what I aspired to be. It felt personally linked to me by the emotion it aroused within me. I remember I’d been working on a self-portrait when I bought it. I don’t know what ever happened to that painting. I’m sure it’s still here somewhere among a pile of others.

I can remember with such specificity the feelings I had then, a private, internal frenzy of potential. Where is that now? Frames of mind aren’t built to last. They aren’t dependable. Even the sturdiest eventually dissolve and disappear.

I set the book down on the side table and finally remove my hat and unzip my heavy coat. I lean over and write three names on the flattened, unused napkin from my lunch.

Arshile Gorky, Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington.

There was a time when seeing the names of these artists thrilled me. It didn’t even have to be their work, just seeing their names. I read the names over a few times and then set the napkin down atop a short pile of other handwritten notes.

There are several of these piles all around the apartment. Sometimes I find my notes in the creases of the chair or in the pockets of my sweaters. The notes started as mundane memos to myself, about recipes, or grocery lists. But they’ve become more urgent over the months. My memory is strong. I’m writing these notes preemptively. I’m writing them because I know I’m very old and soon I’ll forget. I’ll forgot all these things that excite me, thrill me. All the things I adore. I’ll forget the feelings I felt. Then it will be too late to try to remember.