Invisible Spurt
The grass has grown tall and gone to seed so the birds have come to feed in the afternoon and the sky is clear as it hasn’t been since I arrived in Charlottesville one week ago. The mountains of the East Coast are rounder than those of the West and the countryside is more lush and fecund with vegetation.
Today I read some Defoe prose about the Plague and about a spirit appearance and I read “In the Penal Colony” by Kafka–all reading toward my classes. And elbow noodles and a pepper sauce is simmering on the small electric burner of this clean and quiet basement apartment.
That my life be as interesting as the books I read.
All tasks ought to either be the task of a day or be broken up into day-segments–to achieve the effect of completion which marks a good night’s sleep.
To travel, and see strange places–to feel new emotions, to have fresh ideas every day.
Everything I know all together comes bearing on this moment–all I can imagine and think.
The importance of keeping high spirits
Failing not to remember
Glaring lights in the distance mentioned casually
Omission.
Where all the mystery of the earth lies–?
In words, sights, people’s faces.
My own entertainment, amusement–was also to realize much vivid, actual–important–not only just “passing the time” in a melancholy way, but also “doing something about it.”
The untidy opinions of myself which surface from murky dreams when first waking.
The best strength in handling the fragile, tender boy that I am today is carefulness.
To play with these things is magic.
Maybe I will find myself on a new plateau–after long effort–an invisible spurt of development.
I have remembered with my words many good things.
I want a way of understanding every scene or incident of human life–of plundering the murk-trodden sea of various experience.
I should always work very hard to do this which I want.
Make it, though daily, a continuous effort, this reading after sleeping after reading.
Hearing Hongtao talk about scientific precision and the working out and solution of a problem makes me want to work as diligently on my papers.
I can see the decline of America.