Doom is nigh. I am in acute distress, desperately trying to coax sleep, opening my eyes every few seconds to check their faded gleam, and imagining paradise as a place where a sleepless neighbor reads an endless book by the light of an eternal candle.

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.

Running in the wind, in the pollen and dust, a flower in flight.

Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.