Paola Micheli’s Reviews > Nausea > Status Update

I hadn’t the right to exist. I
had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life
put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless
buzzing

Then I realized what separated us: what I thought about him could not reach him; it was psychology, the kind they write about in books. But his
judgment went through me like a sword and questioned my very right to
exist. And it was true, I had always realized it;

I build memories with my present self. I am
cast out, forsaken in the present: I vainly try to rejoin the past: I cannot
escape.

I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of
images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories
or just fiction

People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked? You might say—yes you might say, nature without humanity.

It is the reflection of my face. Often in these lost days I study it. I can
understand nothing of this face. The faces of others have some sense, some
direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I
think it is ugly because I have been told so. But it doesn’t strike me.

"I liked yesterday’s sky so much, a narrow sky, black with rain, pushing
against the windows like a ridiculous, touching face."