I'm not really sure why I feel compelled to write things down and record them. Is it simply that it gives more permanence to the 'I', to see yourself - well, not really yourself, but the self of a few moments ago - reflected back at you? Could well be. I note of course that I felt compelled even to write down my queries about writing itself.

(I am reminded of the scene in Sartre's Nausea in which Roquentin writes some words on the page and then only seconds later, after the ink has dried, feels no connection to the words before him. What relations do these objects of my creation have to 'I'? My second thought following this is, of course - Roquentin was a man who had spent a very long time by himself, with only his thoughts.)

If only it weren't so arduous to attempt to get the contours of language to follow the suppleness of thought, in which everything is presented whole with assumptions and connections already made and present.

The question is: why get language to follow thought anyway?

Anyway. Time to retire for the evening. Only two teeny-weeny little essays to go and then I ascend into realms of freedom in degrees unknown to mankind ever before in history. Or so I like to imagine it.

(Make sure you catch some La Rochefoucauld quotes!)