What is it? Why am I not thinking? Am I now nothing more than a nest for cheap thoughts? I choke them out--they come without end. And it is bitter in my mouth. There is no immediacy, no freshness. I keep repeating my own--and above all others’--long since thought-up thoughts.
Is that my fate: to live from moment to moment, my entire life barely remembered, barely enduring?
A person must live with people. I--in isolation. Between me and others, nothing is born. So it is whoredom--boring and tedious. I must not--cannot--live with people, and yet I live. It’s a sin. Take revenge on me. Every sin avenges itself.
What do people do, when they must live with others? Whatever I do, the effect is the same: a foul smell, nausea, lassitude. I am not well alone; I go to people. And if we irritate each other?* That is an ugliness. So, may we live in whoredom, without joy?
What do I want? Am I not searching for that which cannot be? Human interactions are either a mystery, or whoredom.** I live in whoredom.
By Moyshe Varshe
Translated by Corbin Allardice
*-Mystery here appears to be used in its Christian, theological sense, glossed thusly (in a rather odd review of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life): “In the New Testament the word “mystery” refers to an event, or a reality, of overwhelming significance, but a significance that is either unstatable in words or altogether unknown.”
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