'Things do not care about us: they do not try to influence us, penetrate within us, or trouble us. Besides, "they know nothing about themselves and affirm nothing about themselves." It is rather we who are concerned about things, who try to get to know them, and who are worried about them. It is human beings who, thanks to their freedom, introduce trouble and worry into the world. Taken by themselves, things are neither good nor evil, and should not trouble us. The course of things unfolds in a necessary way, without choice, without hesitation, and without passion.'

Walking.

A bug hit me in the face.

Then another one, and another one.

They were in a caravan.

For the ear alone

'Habermas left students with the impression that he "is not a charismatic figure."'

I had forgotten: when I first met K., for a drink, it was my birthday.

'Today's workplace design asks us to be permanently on call—and demands that we vanish at a moment's notice.'

Along Summit, a brick wall, two or three feet, separating sidewalk from yard, with an eminently sittable concrete top surface, on which are placed two lavender signs written in chalk and kept in place with stone paperweights: 'DO NOT SIT ON THIS WALL'.

(Obviously an interpolation by a frustrated rhapsode.)

'Nine days of drifting followed; but in the night of the tenth the gods washed me up on the island of Ogygia, the home of Calypso of the braided tresses, that formidable goddess with a woman's voice; and she received me kindly and looked after me. But why go again through all this? Only yesterday I told you and your noble wife the whole story here in your home, and it is tedious for me to repeat a tale already plainly told.'