THE ADDENDUM is a showcase of my favorite writings. My personal hope is that others will be able to enjoy and appreciate these works, and possibly serve as a hook for other writings by the authors.

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The Possibility of an Island (an excerpt)
by Michel Houellebecq

During the first part of your life, you only become aware of happiness once you have lost it. Then an age comes, a second one, in which you already know, at the moment when you begin to experience true happiness, that you are, at the end of the day, going to lose it. When I met Belle, I understood that I had just entered this second age. I also understood that I hadn't reached the third age, in which anticipation of the loss of happiness prevents you from living.

With regard to Belle, I will just say, without exaggeration or metaphor, that she gave life back to me. In her company, I lived moments of intense happiness. It was perhaps the first time I had had the opportunity to utter this simple sentence. I lived moments of intense happiness; inside her, or just next to her; when I was inside her, or just before, or just after. Time, at this stage, stayed always in the present; there were long moments when nothing moved, and then everything fell back again into an "and then there was." Later, a few weeks after we met, these happy moments fused, became joined; and my whole life, in her presence, before her eyes, became happiness.