'Why are things so?' asks the tiring boy of nobody in particular.

Tonight, I, not for the first time, am filled with this urge to write, to read, to learn, to translate - to be majorly productive. Anything feels possible. But I know this feeling. Though it feels real and lasting now, it will, by morn, have faded - only its vestiges will remain, or, perhaps, the memory of it will convince me it lingers still but, on testing, I will find I am as disinclined to dedicate myself to any one thing as ever.

It truly is a curse.
I need to learn to dedicate myself to and finish things, one at a time (and not my typical jumping from one thing to another, leaving many things unfinished, forgetting them or jumping back to them to find they no longer inspire me).

My eyes tire. They are sore and I must blink more than usual.
I wish so to be better - to better myself.
I read something a friend had written and was immediately moved to jealousy. Why, I ask, does everyone seem ahead of me? Why (or am I merely expecting too much of myself?) am I behind?
Why does nothing I do seem good enough to me in comparison to anything else?
Why must I so obsessively compare?
Why can't I measure myself not against others but against myself?

Why, oh why, I ask about everything and anything and nothing... Why are things so?
I do not know.

Some poetry. There is respite in poetry. I offer these to you:


Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

- Raymond Carter

Moment

Clear moments are so short.
There is much more darkness. More
ocean than firm land. More
shadow than form.

- Adam Zagajewski
(translated from the Polish by Renata Gorczynski)