rouxet

Woke up perhaps at 3. Oh it’s beginning it’s coming – the horror – physically like a painful wave swelling about the heart – tossing me up. I’m unhappy, unhappy! Down-God, I wish I were dead. Pause. But why am I feeling like this? Let me watch the wave rise. I watch. Failure. Yes, I detect that. Failure, failure. (The wave rises.) Wave crashes. I wish I were dead! I’ve only a few years to live I hope. I can’t face this horror anymore. (This is the wave spreading out over me.) This goes on; several times, with varieties of horror. Then, at the crisis, instead of the pain remaining intense, it becomes rather vague. I doze. I wake with a start. The wave again! The irrational pain; the sense of failure; generally some specific incident… At last I say, watching as dispassionately as I can, Now take a pull of yourself. No more of this. I shove to throw to batter down. I begin to march blindly forward. I feel obstacles go down. I say it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I become rigid and straight, and sleep again, and half wake and feel the wave beginning and watch the light whitening and wonder how, this time, breakfast and daylight will overcome it. Does everyone go through this state? Why have I so little control? It is the case of much waste and pain in my life.

“I feel extremely low when I wait for people, need people, cling to people, look around for people: that only thickens the dark cloud hanging over me and makes me feel myself a villain;”

“Purple sadness is the sadness of classical music and eggplant, the stroke of midnight, human organs, ports cut off for part of every year, words with too many meanings, incense, insomnia, and the crescent moon. It is the sadness of play money, and icebergs seen from a canoe. It is possible to dance to purple sadness, though slowly, as slowly as it takes to dig a pit to hold a sleeping giant. Purple sadness is pervasive, and goes deeper into the interior than the world’s greatest nickel deposits, or any other sadness on earth. It is the sadness of depositories, and heels echoing down a long corridor, it is the sound of your mother closing the door at night, leaving you alone.”