I Could Not Take Lightly

She Was Happy, And Perfectly In Line With The Tradition Of Those Women They Used To Call "ruined," "fallen," Feckless, Bitches In Heat, Ravished Dolls, Sweet Sluts, Instant Princesses, Hot Numbers, Great Lays, Succulent Morsels, Everybody's Darlings . . .

I Wanted To Swallow Myself By Opening My Mouth Very Wide And Turning It Over My Head So That It Would Take In My Whole Body, And Then The Universe, Until All That Would Remain Of Me Would Be A Ball Of Eaten Thing Which Little By Little Would Be Annihilated: That Is How I See The End Of The World.

It's A True Image, Born Of A False Spectacle.

The Despondency That Follows Makes Me Feel Somewhat Like A Shipwrecked Man Who Spies A Sail, Sees Himself Saved, And Suddenly Remembers That The Lens Of His Spyglass Has A Flaw, A Blurred Spot -- The Sail He Has Seen.

Solitude, As I Understand It, Does Not Signify An Unhappy State, But Rather Secret Royalty, Profound Incommunicability Yet A More Or Less Obscure Knowledge Of An Invulnerable Singularity.