46
PARTISAN REVIEW
best of it, and I had already accepted the abnormal enough not to
be much suprprised when I had to recognize it in sexual questions.
No; my astonishment came rather, when I discovered that, in this
field at least, the abnormal (I mean by this: what had been handed
out to me as such) was, on the whole, rather frequent.
I experienced this feeling of being set apart when I was still
young, when I realized that often I did not react like the others-like
the common run of others. And after that,
it
is vain to humHiate
oneself, wish to be one of the crowd, run oneself down, seek to
submerge oneself in the mass and make oneself pleasing--one is still
nonetheless a being apart. The child can experience this feeling
when he is still very young, sometimes with sadness, sometimes even
with anguish, and very rarely with joy.
*
*
*
I see less well and my eyes tire more easily. Also my hearing
is
worse. I tell myself that it is undoubtedly a good thing that thus,
little by little, there draws away from us a world which, if one would
not find it too hard to leave, one would find it too hard to leave
suddenly. The best thing would be, at the same time, to approach
progressively . . . something else.
Nothing is more futile than this thirst for learning which stiU
torments me.
If
I could only break with this habit of thinking that
my time is wasted when I am not occupied! This continual escape
into the thought of others, from fear also of finding myself alone with
my own thoughts, is a form of laziness. I have come to congratulate
myself on the weakness of my• eyes which will soon refuse me too
constant reading.
*
*
*
It is ten o'clock in the evening. The day is scarcely over.
I
hear the last sounds of the farm. And now everything goes to sleep
in a great silence. The bird which sang so melodiously a few moments
ago, is quiet. I tell myself every day, at all hours, that I have cer·
tainly not much longer to live. The thought of death never leaves
me; it lives within me without depressing me.
*
*
*
Every evening, after "Good night", having retired to my
b~
room, I remain a long time seated in an armchair, doing nothing.
Usually, I read rather late into the night, but my eyes are tired and
the light is poor. Then I let my thoughts drift at random; and
I
call that 'meditating'. I have no more projects in my head, not one:
and this inactivity of mind troubles me. I have always loved wort
and have found pleasure in effort. Perhaps (but it cannot !Je here,
where nothing stimulates me to want anything) I will enjoy again
