I think the current situation has to be a really bad one to work through these kind of things, last time I went into relationship mourning was peak Obama years, there was literally ’nothing wrong’ — despite the fact that literally everything was already very wrong. So it was easy to tune out the news to an extent. I think the hard part about all this is that ’the current situation’ is so flattering to our way of being interested. Like, if you make a dangly thing and wave it in front of a cat it is structurally interesting to cats. They are tuned to find that kind of motion interesting. So like, ’the news’ now is as interesting as it can get right now — it has so many parts! And when you want it to they all connect — like, zoom way out and it’s just CAPITALISM and zoom right in and it’s like an email from Jeffrey Epstein to GMax or whatever. Or like, the bullshit that one’s local police are up to — or the bullshit that is happening to one’s friends. Despite having some pretty well defined tasks today I spent like 2 hrs probably just grazing the Internet for ’news’ broadly speaking. 

See Ubu’s admirable remark to Mme Ubu: ‘You are very ugly today. Is it because we have guests?’)

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced. Therefore is a word the poet must not know, which exists only in the mind.

They talk of constructing a system. Artificial construction from which all life immediately withdraws. I let my system grow up slowly and naturally. What eludes logic is the most precious element in us, and one can draw nothing from a syllogism that the mind has not put there in advance. I let the most antagonistic proposals of my nature gradually come to agreement without violence. Suppressing the dialogue in oneself really amounts to stopping the development of life. Everything leads to harmony. The fiercer and more persistent the discord had been, the broader the reconciliation blossoms.

Great fatigue of the heart, yesterday and especially today. Done nothing that matters.

But the human being is so extraordinarily perfectible (Amiel would first have written: malleable, alterable, etc.) — that often you become what you want to be, and you eventually really experience the feeling that you began by pretending to experience; that is, if you are not playing that comedy for others. And how many people, just because they thought themselves devout or in love, soon became sincerely devout or in love! How many, on the other hand, by doubting their sentiments, prevented them from developing! It is not bad, on occasion, to trust yourself. It is almost always good to trust another, for the credit he sees extended to this or that virtue binds him and encourages him to take on what he would not have been able to maintain if left to himself. Certain persons keep themselves in the path of virtue in order to resemble the opinion they know, or hope, that others have of them. Nothing can be more harmful, for certain people, than trying to achieve sincerity, which inclines them to doubt of what are often their best sentiments, to consider themselves sure only of the worst. I never am; I am becoming. I am becoming the person that I believe (or that you believe) I am. There is in every human being a little bit of the irresistible and a great deal of as you will. And even the share of irresistible can be reduced. 

I have reflected considerably about this question of ‘influences’ and believe that very gross errors are committed in this regard. The only thing that is worth anything in literature is what life teaches us. Everything we learn only from books remains abstract, a dead letter. Had I not encountered Dostoyevsky, Nitzsche, Blake, or Browning, I cannot believe that my work would have been any different. At the most they helped me to disentangle my thought. And even then? I took pleasure in hailing those in whom I recognized my thought. But that thought was mine, and it is not to them that I owe it. Otherwise it would be valueless. The great influence perhaps that I have really undergone is that of Goethe, and even then I am not sure whether or not my admiration for Greek literature or Hellenism would not have sufficed to counterbalance my original Christian formation. 

Furthermore, I feel rich enough never to have tried to pass off as mine the thoughts that belonged to someone else.

Despite every resolution of optimism, melancholy occasionally wins out: man has decidedly botched up the planet.

At Beuzeville. I am waiting on the platform with other third-class passengers. An employee is holding back the crowd: ‘Don’t get in; the train is going to move up.’

A well-dressed gentleman disregards him in order to get into the car head of the others:

‘Never mind, never mind,’ he says to the employee trying to hold him back; ‘I have the habit.’

‘The habit of what?’ asks the employee, somewhat abashed by the other’s assurance and cheek. As he gets in, the other shouts:

‘The habit of sitting down.’

And he reappears a moment later the window, smiling and looking very pleased with himself. He has found a corner seat. He is one of those who know their way around.

X. splits hairs in order to know more about their nature. Y., to show off his subtlety.

There is not one of my friends of whom, if I drew his portrait, I should not seem to be ‘saying ill’. Love can be blind; friendship cannot; it owes it to itself not to be; and one can even go as far as to like a friend’s shortcomings; but in order to help him know them. What have I to do with a friendship devoid of perspicacity? I intend to carry my hatred of indulgence to that extent.