Catching My Breath

Though I'm closer to home now, I've gone from Physics to middle school math. Underutilized perhaps, but it pays the bills.

I've only written one poem this month (still tinkering).

The short list of recent reading material: Kafka's Letters to Felice, Barnes' The Lemon Table, some of Paul Bowles' stories, and Daudet's In the Land of Pain (translated by Barnes).

From Daudet's Pain (one of the many interesting "notes"):

*Proust, in Contre Sainte-Beuve, describes how he could scarcely look Daudet in the eye when they met: 'I remembered to what extent bodily pain, so slight compared to his that no doubt he would have enjoyed it as a respite, had made me deaf and blind to other people, to life, to everything except my wretched body, towards which my mind was stubbornly bent, like a sick man lying in bed with his face turned to the wall.' Proust was astonished and impressed by the way 'the beautiful sick man' held forth on life and literature. At one point Daudet left the room and continued the discussion through the open doorway, while evidently giving himself a morphine injection. He returned with sweat on his brow but exuding 'the serenity of victory'.

From Paul Bowles' "Pages from Cold Point":

Soon the people will decide that they want their land to be a part of today's monstrous world, and once that happens, it will be all over. As soon as you have that desire, you are infected with the deadly virus, and you begin to show the symptoms of the disease. You live in terms of time and money, and you think in terms of society and progress. Then all that is left for you is to kill the other people who think the same way, along with a good many of those who do not, since that is the final manifestation of the malady.