libera farmi al mio cesare parve

“I’m always afraid others might talk about me. I’ve failed in everything. I didn’t dare think of being something; I didn’t even dream of thinking about being something, because even in my dreams - in my visionary state as a mere dreamer - I realized I was unfit for life. No feeling can lift my head from the pillow where I’ve let it sink in desperation, unable to deal with my body or even with the idea that I’m alive, or even with the abstract idea of life. I don’t speak the language of any reality, and I stagger among the things of life like a sick man who finally got up after being bedridden for months. Only in bed do I feel like part of normal life. It pleases me to get a fever, since it seems perfectly natural to my recumbent state. Like a flame in the wind I flutter and get dizzy. Only in the dead air of closed rooms do I breathe the normality of my life.”

when i was 12 i babysat this girl for a few years and she would come to me and show me her art, drag me by my wrists and point at the pieces she’d made during the week. and she’d be like “do the voice” and i’d put on a sports-announcer olympics-style voice and be like “such form! this level of coloring! why i haven’t seen such perfection in crayola in a long time. and what is this? why jeff, now this is a true risk… it seems she’s made … a monochrome pink canvas…. i haven’t seen this attempted since winter 1932… and i gotta say, jeff, it’s absolutely splendid”  and she’d fall back giggling. at the end of every night she’d check with me: “did you really like it?” and i’d say yes and talk about something i noticed and tucked her in.