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“Don’t you have a flashlight?” he asked. Of course I had one, but I wouldn’t be able to tell where it was until morning. It’s a feature of flashlights that they’re only visible in the daytime.
997—and soon after an automated Czech voice responded. That’s what happens here. The signal wanders, with no regard for the national borders.
Just a piece of matter, which some unimaginable processes had reduced to a fragile object, separated from everything else. It made me feel sad, horrified, for even someone as foul as he was did not deserve death. Who on earth does?
And then it occurred to me that in a way Big Foot’s death might be a good thing. It had freed him from the mess that was his life. And it had freed other living Creatures from him. Oh yes, suddenly I realized what a good thing death can be, how just and fair, like a disinfectant, or a vacuum cleaner.
never went further than Kłodzko.
Oh yes, the human body is most definitely inhuman. Especially a dead one.
Long years of unhappiness cause a Person worse degradation than a fatal illness.
Now it looked calm and satisfied, as if the spirit were pleased to be finally free of the matter, and the matter were pleased to be finally free of the spirit. In this short space of time a metaphysical divorce had occurred. The end.
Big Foot was born on December 21, 1950. Right here.
Anger makes the mind clear and incisive, able to see more. It sweeps up the other emotions and takes control of the body. Without a doubt Anger is the source of all wisdom, for Anger has the power to exceed any limits.
Kłodzko Valley
Mrs. Duszejko
The Plateau is a distant geological cousin of the Table Mountains, their remote harbinger. Before the war our settlement was called Luftzug, meaning “current of air,”
the bus to Kudowa leaves
That’s what our houses are for—to protect us from the sky, otherwise it would pervade the very inside of our bodies, where, like a little ball of glass, our Soul is sitting. If such a thing exists.
It’s hard work talking to some people, most often males. I have a Theory about it. With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts. The Person beset by this Ailment becomes taciturn and appears to be lost in contemplation. He develops an interest in various Tools and machinery, and he’s drawn to the Second World War and the biographies of famous people, mainly politicians and villains. His capacity to read novels almost
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The Commandant was an obese man of about my age, but he addressed me as if I were his mother, or even his grandmother.
Once we have reached a certain age, it’s hard to be reconciled to the fact that people are always going to be impatient with us. In the past, I was never aware of the existence and meaning of gestures such as rapidly giving assent, avoiding eye contact, and repeating “yes, yes, yes” like clockwork. Or checking the time, or rubbing one’s nose—these days I fully understand this entire performance for expressing the simple phrase: “Give me a break, you old bag.”
Anger restores the gift of Clarity of Vision, which it’s hard to attain in any other state.
find this division of people into three groups—skiers, allergy sufferers and drivers—very convincing. It is a good, straightforward typology.
Whereas the allergy sufferers are always at war. I must surely be an allergy sufferer.
It gave me pleasure, because I could remember the time when it wasn’t possible. I love crossing borders.
mind—that such a Person is not him- or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality—its inexpressibility.
They really were the people from the well—they’d fallen into it long ago and had now arranged their lives at the bottom of it, thinking the well was the entire world.
Nothing is capable of eluding this order. It works on me like alcohol, or one of those new drugs that, so I imagine, fill a person with pure delight.
In any case, I know the date of my own death, and that lets me feel free.
His mixtures had startling colors and shocking smells. Perhaps he believed that the cure for an allergic rash had to be just as spectacular as the rash itself.
They fear pathos more than hell.
that he who suffers sees the back of God.
Maybe it means that he who suffers has special access to God, by a side door, he is blessed, he embraces some sort of truth which without suffering would be hard to comprehend. So in a way, the only person who’s healthy is one who suffers, however strange it might sound.
Without any thought but with religious zeal, young people believe in statistics. It’s enough to give them something expressed as a percentage, or as a probability, and they take it in good faith.
an emotional mood of this kind assails me—I think it’s to do with my Ailments—and
“A man’s free to do what he wants with his life, until he falls foul of the banks,” Dizzy sermonized with contagious certainty.
my tears could flow, bathing my eyes and improving my sight. Maybe that’s why I could see more than people with dry eyes.
healthy is an insecure state and does not bode well. It’s better to be ill in a quiet way, then at least we know what we’re going to die of.
I couldn’t help thinking that someone who overuses the phrase “in truth” is sure to be a liar.
once again we would assume that we don’t inherit our life experience, that all the sciences in the world are a waste of time, and that we’re incapable of learning anything from history.
I have, as I see it, Lazy Venus syndrome. That’s what I call this Conformity. In this case we’re dealing with a Person whom fortune has gifted generously, but who has entirely failed to use their potential. Such
To my mind, the word “priority” is just as ugly as “cadaver” or “cohabitee,” but I really didn’t want to quarrel with her, either
“Drive your plow over the bones of the dead,” I said to myself in the words of Blake; is that how it went?
But if the hunters have him as their patron, they’re making him the patron saint of the sin he used to commit, from which he broke free.
Anger always leaves a large void behind it, into which a flood of sorrow pours instantly, and keeps on flowing like a great river, without beginning or end. My tears came; once again their sources were replenished.
A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should raise the spirits of people like us. Everyone knows the profit to be reaped from the useful, but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless.
And that’s all. I didn’t stop to think about it. I was sure I had killed him, and it seemed quite all right. I had no pangs of conscience. I only felt great relief.
I wasn’t lying when I kept insisting it was Animals taking revenge on people. That was the truth. I was their Tool.
