Becoming unclean with joy. Since now I understand that what I’d begun to feel was already joy, which I still hadn’t recognized or understood. In my mute plea for help, what I was struggling against was a vague first joy that I didn’t want to perceive in myself because, even vague, it was already horrible: it was a joy without redemption, I don’t know how to explain it to you, but it was a joy without the hope.
