Activity

2/11/59

Discipline, solitude and the ascetic life are not difficult for me, but I do not like the feeling of being virtuous that comes when I lead such a life even for two days. I resent feeling virtuous, just as I resent ”virtue” and consider it stupid. Small use—at this point in my life—to rem…

It is very, very difficult for me to know what to forgive among people’s vices (mine, too). Where to take a stand and say, finally, this is wrong, and therefore this person or that no longer deserves my love or friendship or anyone else’s. Europeans are better off than Americans in being brought up…

11/27/58

By the age of forty, one has amassed so many associations with music, colors, sounds, tastes, words, that it is possible to foresee life becoming unbearable. Every Beethoven sonata drags a nightmare in its wake. Every scent that women wear brings tears and trembling.

A time of abeyance for me, I have had small ones before, but none so long or profound as this. A caesura in my life.

I am in a state of cowed abeyance, like someone who has been whipped—or laid low after pride.