“Smarter living.” There have been times in my life when focusing on things like cleaning the bathroom helped keep me sane. There have been times when everything seemed to hinge on whether or not I could get the smallest chore done. Times when nothing meant more than that moment in the day when I took my break from work, found a quiet place, and ate the sandwich and piece of fruit I’d packed that morning. A moment of peace. Anxiety and depression held at bay. I could do it, then. I could live another day.

“I admit that my own interest in things has been shrinking for years,” my ex said. “I haven’t read a novel in, oh, I can’t even say how long. In fact, the only books I read now are for work. I watch a little television when I’m too exhausted to do anything else. But I never go to the movies anymore. No museums, no concerts. No vacations, needless to say. No travel except for work.”

For decades it was art and culture he’d gone around the world lecturing about. How could he have lost interest completely?

“If every poet in the world sat down today and wrote a poem about climate change, it wouldn’t save one tree. Anyway, art—great art seems to me a thing of the past.”

“That’s ridiculous. There are more professional artists working now than ever before.”

“To be sure. But a certain kind of artistic genius doesn’t seem to occur anymore. We’re in the age of great tech, where genius abounds, but the last creative artist on a level with, say, Mozart or Shakespeare was George Balanchine, who was born in 1904. In any case, I certainly don’t believe in the salvific power of art as I once did. I mean, who could? Considering what we’ve come to.”

“What about sex?”

“What?”

“Going back to what you said about your lack of interest in things that used to matter to you.”