Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her.
Yes, there is no good pretending, it is hard to leave everything. The horror-worn eyes linger abject on all they have beseeched so long, in a last prayer, the true prayer at last, the one that asks for nothing. And it is then a little breath of fulfilment revives the dead longings and a murmur is born in the silent world, reproaching you affectionately with having despaired too late. The last word in the way of a viaticum.
But now he knows these hills, that is to say he knows them better, and if ever again he sees them from afar it will be I think with other eyes, and not only that but the within, all that inner space one never sees, the brain and heart and other caverns where thought and feeling dance their sabbath, all that too quite differently disposed.
They never lynch children, babies, no matter what they do they are whitewashed in advance. I personally would lynch them with the utmost pleasure, I don’t say I’d lend a hand, no, I am not a violent man, but I’d encourage the others and stand them drinks when it was done.
All hangs together, I am in chains.
I was sorry he had not a cat, or a young dog, or better still, an old dog. But all he had to offer in the way of dumb companions was a pink and grey parrot. He used to try and teach it to say, Nihil in intellectu, etc. These first three words the bird managed well enough, but the celebrated restriction was too much for it, all you heard was a series of squawks.
And Watt’s need of semantic succour was at times so great that he would set to trying names on things, and on himself, almost as a woman hats.
It’s all a muddle in my head, graves and nuptials and the different varieties of motion.
Boys my age with whom, in spite of everything, I was obliged to mix occasionally, mocked me.
I have finished Pasternak with mixed feelings, which is more than I hoped for.
A instant of fraternity. But outside their explosions of violence this sentiment is as foreign to them as butterflies. And this owing not so much to want of heart or intelligence as to the ideal preying on one and all. So much for the inviolable zenith where for amateurs of myth lies hidden a way out to earth and sky.
This was indeed a merciful coincidence, was it not, that at the moment of Watt’s losing sight of the ground floor, he lost interest in it also.
As long as I kept walking I didn’t hear them, because of the footsteps. But as soon as I halted I heard them again, a little fainter each time, admittedly, but what does it matter, faint or loud, cry is cry, all that matters is that it should cease. For years I thought they would cease. Now I don’t think so any more. I could have done with other loves perhaps. But there it is, either you love or you don’t.
For the climber averse to avoidable acrobatics a given niche may lie so many paces or meters to east or west of the woman vanquished without of course his naming her thus or otherwise even in his thoughts.
And Watt preferred on the whole having to do with things of which he did not know the name, though this too was painful to Watt, to having to do with things of which the known name, the proven name, was not the name, any more, for him. For he could always hope, of a thing of which he had never known the name, that he would learn the name, some day, and so be tranquilized.
And he said also, by way of a rider, that even if he had the whole night before him, in which to rest, and grow warm, on a chair, in the kitchen, even then it would be a poor resting, and a mean warming, beside the rest and warmth that he remembered, the rest and warmth that he awaited, a very poor resting indeed, and a paltry warming, and so in any case very likely a source, in the long run, less of gratification, than of annoyance.
And perhaps he has come to that stage of his instant when to live is to wander the last of the living in the depths of an instant without bounds, where the light never changes and the wrecks look all alike.
For I had no illusions, I knew that all was about to end, or to begin again, it little mattered which, and it little mattered how, I had only to wait.
Let there then be light, it will not necessarily be disastrous. Or let there be none, we’ll manage without it. But these lights, in the plural, which rear aloft, swell, sweep down and go out hissing, reminding one of the naja, perhaps the moment has come to throw them into the balance and have done with this tedious equipoise, at last.
For why be discouraged, one of the thieves was saved, that is a generous percentage.