Pain

‘Pain doesn’t kill.’ ‘I know that, you daft prick—its cause does; it might.’ I thought
I was used to it—it’s been three years, after all—but lately it has gotten worse,
waking me up too early in the morning—which in itself is a real pain
because how can I get through the day on too little sleep?—and restricting my movements.
Yet, I do nothing about it because going to the doctor seems like a hassle I’d rather avoid,
and I hate pills.

It’s not like I suddenly discovered some hitherto latent adoration for the Book of Job
or awakened masochistic tendencies, though I suspect the almighty geezer,
who, it turns out, lived in an apartment in Brussels, would love that. On second thought,
he wouldn’t—where’s the fun when the tormented get pleasure from the ordeal? In reality,
it’s probably about energy conservation and the fact that I’ve already produced offspring,
or I’m just lazy.

Journal (Diary is my Bible)

I watched A Single Man this afternoon. I’ve seen this film so many times that I’ve lost count. I have a habit of watching films that make an exceptionally great impression on me over and over again, sometimes even several times a day if time allows. This was the case, for example, with Mr. Nobody, directed by Jaco Van Dormael, which, by the way, wasn’t the only film of his that I liked so much—The Brand New Testament also received its fair share of my time. Another one is Columbus, Kogonada’s directorial debut, a new discovery that I still relish. But this doesn’t just apply to relatively new films. For example, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is also on my list.

When I think about it, there is no denying that I am a film buff. However, I can’t think of many books to which I have returned often. While still a teenager, I had a period when I read Honoré de Balzac’s Father Goriot several times—by the way, one of only a few books that made me cry. Of course, I had my favourite authors, and I read almost everything they wrote—Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Saul Bellow, to name just two—but the book that is always at my fingertips is Witold Gombrowicz’s Diary. Strangely enough, apart from Diary, of all he wrote, I have only read Ferdydurke and Trans-Atlantyk, and neither of these two made any significant impression on me. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t bad; I just don’t feel like I would have missed out if I hadn’t read them, while Diary is my Bible.