Symbolics

"In the past - even long after she had left me - I used to think about Anny. Now, I don’t think about anybody any more. I don’t even bother to look for words. It flows through me, more or less quickly, and I don’t fix anything, I just let it go. Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.

These young people amaze me; drinking their coffee, they tell clear, plausible stories. If you ask them what they did yesterday, they don’t get flustered; they tell you about it in a few words. If I were in their place, I’d start stammering. It’s true that for a long time now nobody has bothered how I spend my time. When you live alone, you even forget what it is to tell a story: plausibility disappears at the same time as friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can’t make head or tail: you’d make a terrible witness. But on the other hand, everything improbable, everything which nobody would ever believe in a café comes your way."

Antoine Roquentin - Nausea (written by Jean Paul Sartre)