If I must drool, I may as well drool on cashmere.
This comment illustrates one of the paradoxical sadnesses about the author's condition. his mind and his wit, and also his humor, are still intact and functional, even though his body is betraying him. His bitter humor also both masks and highlights his frustration with his physical symptoms; he is drooling and cannot control this. He is also referencing his previously privileged and successful existence; he is a man who wears nice clothes, enjoys good fabric, wears cashmere sweaters and drapes cashmere blankets on his furniture. He is not a man used to the plastic monotony of hospital furniture. He is trying to reclaim his life and his identity pre-stroke.
I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear. I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.
There is incredible sadness and melancholy in this observation, especially because unlike a sailor, Bauby has not made a decision that will change his life, or paint a line of demarcation between his past and his future. His true self is fading away because of a change that has been forced upon him by his body. However, the changing of his life, as sudden as it was, is also a slow voyage because he is able to see the things he once was, and once loved, slipping away. It is as if he has died, and now exists in memories, despite the fact he is living. He is in the strange position of having cherished memories about a man whom he once very much enjoyed, and at the same time, being that man himself.
But I see in the clothes a symbol of continuing life. And proof that I still want to be myself.
Clothes maketh the man. This old saying seems to sum up the point the author is making in this observation about his growing desire to still wear the clothes from his old life in his vastly different new one. He still wants to be himself. He still wants to be seen as the man he used to be, and he still believes that in many ways he is that person. Inside he feels like the person he always has been and in wearing his old familiar clothes he is also representing himself to others as the same person. It also shows that there is still a spark, and an interest, in being alive within him, which is surprising given his circumstances, but something that he is greatly encouraged by.
