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October 27 - October 31, 2025
Lila always knew what she wanted and got it; I don’t want anything, I’m made of nothing.
And yet now that we were seventeen the substance of time no longer seemed fluid but had assumed a gluelike consistency and churned around us like a yellow cream in a confectioner’s machine.
“Yes, anyone who believes that is lucky: there are people who leave and people who know how to be left.”
“For your whole life you love people and you never really know who they are.”
Life is like that: one day you’re getting hit, the next kissed.”
Today I feel some uneasiness in recalling how much I suffered, I have no sympathy for myself of that time.
No, I wasn’t able to tell myself what my desires were with any clarity. Not only was I careful to hide them from others but I admitted them to myself in a skeptical way, without conviction.
Everything in the world was in precarious balance, pure risk, and those who didn’t agree to take the risk wasted away in a corner, without getting to know life. I understood suddenly why I hadn’t had Nino, why Lila had had him. I wasn’t capable of entrusting myself to true feelings. I didn’t know how to be drawn beyond the limits. I didn’t possess that emotional power that had driven Lila to do all she could to enjoy that day and that night. I stayed behind, waiting. She, on the other hand, seized things, truly wanted them, was passionate about them, played for all or nothing, and wasn’t
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I am part of the universal terror; at this moment I’m the infinitesimal particle through which the fear of every thing becomes conscious of itself;
“Yes. Like the sea on a calm day. Or like a sunset. Or like the sky at night. It’s like face powder patted on over the horror. If you take it away, we are left alone with our fear.”
That people, even more than things, lost their boundaries and overflowed into shapelessness is what most frightened Lila in the course of her life.
A cruel game of mirrors
