Today's air was thick and the water running from the tap strangely warm. I had a relaxing day. I scrubbed myself with spirulina and honey, I drank my cocktail of veges mindfully, I ran without music, I spent time with family and I melted away into a book. I like to commit to a book intensely so it's hard when I want to read but aren't quite collected enough to propel myself as much as I'd prefer, so that's why I haven't read as much this year. The last couple of days I finally feel a little more settled. So caught up in the fierce, dominating mentality of the fitness disposition I've been harping on about, I've completely neglected the gentle side of a book, a lit candle and a mind ready to surrender. It feels good to be back.
"I grew bewildered: who was talking? about what? and to whom?My mother had disappeared; not a smile or trace of complicity. I was an exile. And then I did not recognize the language. Where did she get her confidence? After a moment, I realized: it was the book that was talking. Sentences emerged that frightened me: they were like real centipedes; they swarmed with syllables and letters, span out their diphthongs and made their double consonants hum; fluting, nasal, broken up with sighs and pauses, rich in unknown words, they were in love with themselves and their meanderings and had no time for me: sometimes they disappeared before I could understand them; at others, I had understood in advance and they went rolling on nobly towards their end without sparing me a comma. These words were obviously not meant for me. The tale itself was in its Sunday best: the woodcutter, the woodcutter's wife and the daughters, the fairy, all those little people, our fellow-creatures, had acquired majesty; their rags were magnificently described, words left their mark on objects, transforming actions into rituals and events into ceremonies."
- Words, Jean Paul Sartre
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