“Man is like a cricket. He sees the cricket’s limitations but not his own. The cricket can’t read or write or think scientifically. He can’t sail a boat or build a house. He potters away in his clod or field. What can a cricket know about god?”
That’s what man says, unable to see beyond his own clod. He scoffs and sneers but what is he but a two-legged cricket, brown, yellow or black? I’m sure the cricket has his illusions, some of them as pat as ours.
P
Charaxos has returned to Mytilene.
Our meeting was unavoidable, of course. He had on the commonplace mask of the man in the street and talked about his trip, the grinding poverty in Egypt, the bad state of our mercenaries there...
No mention of settling his debts! Not a word about Rhodopis! Evidently Kleis does not exist.
“All of us are well, thank you,” I said. “Nothing has changed for us here.”
What is there between us? It is something deeper than ourselves. When I walked away, my eyes burned and my cheeks felt hot.
Here is a passage from my first journal, written in childish hand: