Status Updates From Diez

Last night I heard the clock stop two minutes to wait for the Moon, which had likewise stopped in order to watch, in its own shadow on the street, two dogs fighting.

“There could be no more than ten meters between us.
Behind me, all the meters of my life gone by.
But in front, I repeat, only ten.
I wasn’t about to use them up walking towards those ladies. Any man, when he sees he has no more than ten meters left, stops.”

“Because I felt the reality of destiny, its living existence, like a monster that, though invisible, loomed – heavy, mute, and sullen – over the city.
It was a monster made of threads.
Those threads went weaving themselves together through all the streets.
Every passerby trailed a thread along behind him, at times like a slug’s silvery slime, at others like the fine strand a spider expels.”

“It will be remarked that everything I have written is the fruit of my own great exaggeration.”

“Three forces – desperate in their useless roaming, bitter in their nonemployment, furious in their coerced running, fearful of reflecting their misfortune onto other, already extant forces – were now, in spite of it all, cradled in a balance that could ultimately break, especially if, free and capricious, they themselves, the wind, or ennui drove them against that balance, striking it.”

“I have seen a green bird…” That was the phrase – hummed at first, then only spoken – that expressed all feeling.

…

And so, if one of us had a great piece of news to share, a success, a conquest, a triumph, he would rub his hands together and exclaim with a radiant face, “I have seen a green bird!”