Random Diary

Every day I’m mistreated by Matter. My sensibility is a wind-whipped flame. Walking down a street I see, in those who pass by me, not the facial expressions that they really have but the expressions that they would have if they knew what I’m like and the kind of life I lead, if my face and my gestures betrayed the shy and ridiculous abnormality of my soul. In eyes that don’t even look at me I suspect there are smirks (which I consider only natural) directed at the awkward exception I embody in a world of people who know how to act and to enjoy life; and the passing physiognomies, informed by an awareness that I myself have interposed and superimposed, seem to snicker out loud at my life’s timid gesticulations. Reflecting on all this, I try to convince myself that the smirks and mild reproach I feel come from me, and me alone, but once the image of me looking ridiculous has been objectified in others, I can no longer say it’s just mine. I suddenly feel myself suffocating and vacillating in a hothouse of mockery and hostility. All point their finger at me from the depths of their souls. All who pass by pelt me with their mirthful and contemptuous taunts. I walk among fiendish phantoms that my sick imagination has invented and placed in real people. Everything slaps me in the face and makes fun of me. And sometimes in the middle of the street – where in fact no one even notices me – I suddenly stop and look around me, as if searching for a new dimension, a door leading to the inside of space, to the other side of space, where I could run away from my awareness of other people, from my overly objectified intuition of the reality that belongs to other living souls. Does this habit of placing myself in the souls of others really lead me to see myself as others see me or would see me, if they took notice of me? Yes. And as soon as I realize how they would feel about me if they knew me, it’s as if they really did feel that way, as if right at that moment they were feeling exactly that, and expressing what they feel. To associate with others is sheer torture for me. And the others are in me. I’m forced to associate with them even when they’re nowhere near. All alone, I’m surrounded by multitudes. There’s no escape possible, unless I were to escape from myself.

O magnificent hills at twilight, O narrowish streets in the moonlight, if only I had your ..... unconsciousness, your spirituality that’s nothing but Matter, with no inner dimension, no sensibility, and no place for feelings, thoughts, or disquiet of the spirit! Trees so completely and only trees, with your greenness so pleasant to look at, so foreign to my troubles and concerns, so soothing to my anxieties precisely because you don’t have eyes with which to see them nor a soul which, seeing through those eyes, might misunderstand and make fun of them! Stones on the road, logs here and there, anonymous dirt of the ground that’s everywhere, my sister because your unawareness of my soul is a cosy and peaceful repose… Sunlit or moonlit things of Earth, my mother, so tenderly my mother, who can’t even criticize me like my own human mother, for you lack the soul that would instinctively analyse me, nor do you have swift glances which would betray thoughts about me that you’d never even confess to yourself… Vast ocean, my roaring childhood companion that soothes and lulls me, because your voice isn’t human and thus can never whisper my weaknesses and shortcomings into human ears… Broad and blue sky so close to the mystery of the angels....., you do not look at me with deceitful green eyes, and if you hold the Sun against your chest you don’t do it to seduce me, nor when you [cover yourself] with stars are you trying to show me that you’re superior… Universal peace of Nature, maternal because you don’t know me; aloof tranquillity of atoms and systems, so brotherly in your complete ignorance of me… I’d like to pray to your vastness and your calm, as a sign of my gratitude for having you and being able to love you without any doubts or qualms; I’d like to give ears to your inability to hear despite your always hearing us, to give eyes to your sublime blindness with which you always see us, and to be the object of your attentions via these imaginary ears and eyes, to feel the comfort of being noticed by your Nothingness, as if it were a definitive death, far far away, beyond any hope for another life, beyond any God and the possibility of other beings, voluptuously nil, with the spiritual colour of all matter…