Selected Cronicas

EXCESS AND PRIVATION

The worst thing of all is to become suddenly tired of everything. It is rather like excess, as if one already had everything and wanted for nothing more. Tired of the Beatles. Tired, too, of those who are not the Beatles. Even tired of my inner freedom, which I gained as such great cost. Tired of loving one’s neighbour. Hatred would be preferable. What could save me from this feeling of excess (is it excess or a useless freedom?) would be anger. Not that loving anger you sometimes find. But naked, uncontrolled anger. The more violent the better. Anger with those who know nothing. Anger, too, with those intelligent people who always have something to say. Anger with avantgarde cinema, and why not? And anger with the other kind of cinema as well. Anger with the affinity I share with certain people, as if this excess within me were not enough. And fury with success? Success is a joke, a false reality. Fury has saved my life. Without it, what would have become of me? How could I have borne to read those headlines reporting that one hundred starving children die every day in Brazil? Is anger my deep revulsion against being human? I am tired of being human. And angry at feeling so much love. Some days I am angry just to be alive. Because anger enlivens everything. I have never felt so alert. I know this will pass and that a vital sense of need will return. Then I shall want everything, everything! Oh, how good to need only to be satisfied. Oh, how good to feel that moment of need before the moment of satisfaction. But not to be satisfied too easily. Because one can tire of things which seem easy. Is even writing becoming too easy? Why do I now write with my fingertips when I used to write from the heart? It is sinful, I know, to seek privation. Yet the privation I am speaking of is much more satisfying than this feeling of excess. I simply do not want it. I am now going to sleep because I cannot bear today’s world, so full of useless things. Goodnight, forevermore. I shall be back next Saturday. And please do not write to me: I have no desire to hear the human voice. And if I am listening to myself as I take my leave, that is only because it helps to increase my fury.

But there is only one fury which is blessed: the fury of those who suffer privation.