how I, or you, or we, might feel, sometimes

from Italo Calvino, The Road to San Giovanni trans. Tim Parks (1993)

For the brief span of our lifetimes, everything remains there on the screen, distressingly present; the first images of eros and premonitions of death catch up with us in every dream; the end of the world began with us and shows no signs of ending; the film we thought we were watching is the story of our lives.