Day 0374

The lovely routine repeated. Painting at the apartment, coffee and sketching at a café. Enjoyed acting magnanimously and paying for things. A proxy girlfriend, a habit I formed long ago. Talked politics and once more found myself espousing views I'm not at all convinced I actually hold. I speak just to speak. I hopelessly lose myself by attacking the wrong points (i.e. going to the root of determinism, the grounding problem of ethics, the impossibility of predicting the outcome of actions), forgetting that I have since concluded that all this being so we still need to live, and to live we need to govern and so we need policy of some kind, and so it is in fact worthwhile -- or as worthwhile as anything can be given the ultimate and equal worthlessness of everything -- to hold political opinions and to engage directly with current affairs. But I derail the conversation and can't engage with the matters at hand, a sign of my political ignorance and alienation from the practical realities of the world. Was rightly accused of intellectualising everything. Mishkin.

Met another friend from Florence in the afternoon, talked about the demands of being an artist, depressed myself with how little I know compared to people who continued the course that I quit. Fantasised about being a full-time artist with a studio. Came home and worked on Jess's portrait, finished The Idiot and highly enjoyed its unsatisfactory ending. Started Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, which has an exquisitely precise style.

Dreamed of my ex because my faux-domesticity (washing up, cooking, watching films with a non-blood relation of the opposite gender) has revived dormant memories of ease and comfort and companionship.