More specifically concerning: loneliness
12.10.01
12 October 2001, around 16.31.
Shaping into an utter emptiness. – oh – I was thinking, for a moment, of the world beyond the silly sighing, past the swaying hum of a string quartet, a world of mirth and loud laughter, of harsh tones and brash smiles, of confused and blurring lines, of lights unsteady and the dark ever before […]
24.11.01 – Saturday
24 November 2001, around 16.02.
I have not spoken to anyone for three days. My voice feels harsh and tight in my throat, a sharp clenched fist holding back – oh, everything. A hungry, haunted look now taints me about the eyes, and I must look away from passing strangers lest from my stares they catch hold of my unease, […]
The thing is
25 November 2002, around 16.39.
That it seems nothing is happening. I spend each and every day following the same routine, the dull rhythm of the week waxing and waning, more timely than the moon. Waking up at 5:30 in the morning, the darkness still swirling like the fog, I stumble, tumble down the stairs, make dark coffee and a […]
Blindness
3 January 2003, around 7.11.
It is a peculiar sort of blindness; I’m not sure I can explain it. I cannot call it literal. Because it is not. It is nothing of the sort. What it is, rather, is the a willful refusal to see. Perhaps not a refusal to see—perhaps an elision of what one notices. And I admit, […]
Evening
19 January 2003, around 11.02.
An evening mildly out upon the town, following that vaguest of inclinations: civility. The plan had been to step out to the pub on the corner by the house; but peering in the windows at the sodden murmurings of the gray-haired regulars at the bar, we four, young and indecisive, given rather to nights ‘at […]
Oddities
5 February 2003, around 9.18.
Sometimes I cannot tell if I am invisible because people think I do not wish to be seen, or because people do not wish to see me. Most times both seem true. The glacial drifting of the swans upon the river. Coasting loose-limbed on an ancient bike, almost Cassius-faced in a green wool coat. Birds […]
dialogue in solitude
16 December 2007, around 20.47.
Once again, why Spinoza? When I was talking to Dime T. from Ohrid, Macedonia, one afternoon about parapsychology, he asked me: ‘Why do you think you are writing about Spinoza?’ Had it been a conversation with a philosopher, I would have said something like: ‘Because of his unique philosophy, because of his divergence from Descartes’ […]
terra incognita
10 February 2013, around 5.14.
Charles Reade, under the banner of imagination, departs from everyday life to parts unknown. 1 Charles Reade shows up in Jean Strouse’s biography of Alice James: Her improving health allowed Alice to enjoy a greater range of intellectual life than before. She went to the theater […] and she was reading a great deal, particularly […]
Montaigne 1.28
24 July 2015, around 12.23.
I cannot allow those other common friendships to be placed in the same line with ours. I have as much knowledge of them as another, and of the most perfect of their kind, but I should not advise any one to measure them with the same rule; he would be much mistaken (190). anachronism –entry […]
caresses and lullabies
3 January 2016, around 13.12.
Natalia Ginzburg on vocations.
Crambe repetita (42)
15 March 2016, around 9.17.
Danielle Dutton, Margaret the First.