FEMININELY MASCULINE

"almost the entire day in bed. continuous state of fever makes everything taste
bland to me. regain health at all costs. i need my strength.
i do not need life to be easy for me
but i want to be able to match myself up to it if it is difficult..."

"in my home, not even one sofa. a handful of chairs.
always like this. never neglect nor comfort"

"at the end of my life I would like to return to the path
that runs down the Sansepolcro valley, descend slowly,
stroll in the valley between the wispy olive trees and the long cypresses,
and in the house with thick walls and cool
rooms find a bare room with narrow windows from where I can watch
night descend upon the valley.
[...] I would like...Everywhere and always this desire for solitude,
which I don't even understand and which is like an announcement
of a sort of death tinged with the taste of the contemplation
that accompanies it."

"'No more feasts nor orgies, no more sleeping around nor
debauchery; cover yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ and no longer seek to
gratify the flesh in its concupiscence.'"


"i love this anxious, wounded little face, tragic
at times, beautiful always, this little being
with attachments so strong but with a face
lit by dark and gentle flame, that of purity, of soul."

"at times i feel myself overtaken by an immense
tenderness for these people around me who live
in the same century"

"i cannot live with people for a long time.
i need a little solitude, a portion of eternity"

"the world fills you and you are empty: plentitude.
[...] The one who refuses chooses himself, who covets
prefers himself. Do not ask nor refuse. Accept surrender."


Albert Camus
-Notebooks, 1951 - 1959

__________________

this is the last of the Camus musings,
but before i return the book,
i leave you with this:

"I have suffered from what you revealed to me: that's a fact.
But you do not have to be sad for my sadness.
I am wrong, I know it, and if I cannot prevent my heart from being unjust,
I can at least make it capable of equity [...]
I know that I have done everything to detach
you from me. All my life, as soon as a person got attached to me,
I did everything to distance them.
There is of course the incapacity wherein I am to make commitments,
my taste for people, of multiplicity, my pessimism with regard to myself.
[...]
To help myself, in any case, I will not only help myself to this cold equity
of the heart but to the preference, to the tenderness,
that I carry for you. I sometimes accuse myself of being incapable of love.
Maybe this is true, but I have been able to select a few people
and to keep for them, faithfully, the best of me,
no matter what they do."