Sweet Days of Discipline

by Fleur Jaeggy

I still thought that to get something you had to go straight for your goal, whereas it is only distractions, uncertainty, distance that bring us closer to our targets, and then it is the target which strikes us.

These moments seem so long, the nightly waiting as, before falling asleep, you have to invite a dream to come.

I had lost what was most important in my life, the sky was still blue, oblivious, everything yearned for peace and happiness, the landscape was idyllic, like idyllic, desperate adolescence.

And she had something Spanish about her, something ancient, something ecclesiastic.