Pitiful Heaven!—but no, Heaven is not pitiful.
Heaven also has fooled me, more than once.
There is something for every one that I have ever known—some tender thing. But what is there for me? What have I to remember out of the long years?
The blue sky is weeping, but not for me. The rain is persistent and heavy as damnation. It falls on my mind and it maddens my mind. It falls on my soul and it hurts my soul.—Everything hurts my soul.—It falls on my heart and it warps the wood in my heart.
Of womankind and nineteen years, a philosopher of the peripatetic school, a thief, a genius, a liar, and a fool—and unhappy, and filled with anguish and hopeless despair. What is my life? Oh, what is there for me!
There has always been Nothing. There will always be Nothing.
There was a miserable, damnable, wretched, lonely childhood. Itself has passed, but the pain of it has not passed. The pain of it is with me and is added to the pain of now. It is pain that never lets itself be forgotten. The pain of the childhood was the pain of Nothing. The pain of now is the pain of Nothing. Oh, the pathetic burlesque-tragedy of Nothing!
It is burlesque, but it is none the less tragedy. It is tragedy that eats its way inward.
It is only I and the sand and barrenness.