At Times The Mirror Increases

This Is What I Mean When I Say I Would Like To Swim Against The Stream Of Time: I Would Like To Erase The Consequences Of Certain Events And Restore An Initial Condition. But Every Moment Of My Life Brings With It An Accumulation Of New Facts, And Each Of These New Facts Bring With It Consequences; So The More I Seek To Return To The Zero Moment From Which I Set Out, The Further I Move Away From It. . . .

So You Begin To Wonder If Leonia's True Passion Is Really, As They Say, The Enjoyment Of New And Different Things, And Not, Instead, The Joy Of Expelling, Discarding, Cleansing Itself Of A Recurrent Impurity.

My Working Method Has More Often Than Not Involved The Subtraction Of Weight. I Have Tried To Remove Weight, Sometimes From People, Sometimes From Heavenly Bodies, Sometimes From Cities; Above All I Have Tried To Remove Weight From The Structure Of Stories And From Language. . . . Maybe I Was Only Then Becoming Aware Of The Weight, The Inertia, The Opacity Of The World--qualities That Stick To The Writing From The Start, Unless One Finds Some Way Of Evading Them.

The Book I'm Looking For,' Says The Blurred Figure, Who Holds Out A Volume Similar To Yours, 'is The One That Gives The Sense Of The World After The End Of The World, The Sense That The World Is The End Of Everything That There Is In The World, That The Only Thing There Is In The World Is The End Of The World.

For Those Who Pass It Without Entering, The City Is One Thing; It Is Another For Those Who Are Trapped By It And Never Leave. There Is The City Where You Arrive For The First Time; And There Is Another City Which You Leave Never To Return. Each Deserves A Different Name; Perhaps I Have Already Spoken Of Irene Under Other Names; Perhaps I Have Spoken Only Of Irene.