--

‘My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.

What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

I never know what you are thinking. Think. ‘

I think we are in rats’ alley.

Where the dead men lost their bones.

‘What is that noise?’

The wind under the door.

‘What is that noise doing? What is the wind doing?’

Nothing again nothing.

‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?’

I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

‘Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head?’

“The Frontierless: those who thrive on the absence of frontiers.

The Staphylococcus in the Phylactery.

The crystalline humidity of the full moon.

The final slaughter of mirrors.

Baudelaire says that every man bears within him a ceaselessly renewed dose of natural opium. There is, thus an innate form of the will’s dissociation from itself - secret element of birth. ‘It is you whom your pipe smokes.’ It is you the screen watches.

I suspect her of pretending to sleep to avoid any sexual contact. Only conversation excites her deeply, and her laughter ripples out while her words flutter around like speech-bubbles. But these bubbles are prophylactic: they protect her like gossamer.”

“And now - now it only remains for me to light a cigarette and go home. Dear God, only now am I remembering that people die. Does that include me?

Don’t forget, in the meantime, that this is the season for strawberries. Yes.”