BGM: Paul McCartney - No More Lonely Nights
Reading Paul Valéry's "Monsieur Teste", this morning I thought about the concept of "intelligence". As I have written in these journals, TBH I could have never thought I could be smart. Even now I think of myself as an evil guy with a weird mind... Maybe this feeling can come from a certain "Japanese" shyness I have certainly in my mind by nature, but mainly it comes from the fact that I had never been praised as smart or gifted by anyone... even by myself.
Remembering those negative, traumatic memories of my school days... and even thinking that I wouldn't be able to live this life anymore, I started writing my English notes about "Monsieur Teste" as usual. Like the narrator in that book, by writing these notes I tried to look at this self as an object, getting rid of any depressive delusion/obsession.
Monsieur Teste in this book must be an ultimately intelligent person for me, or in a way he must be a dutiful and stoic man who keeps on trying to think about himself as a kind of surgery toward his mentality. How to analyze/criticize the mentality, the self in the mind... It must be a very difficult trial for us because each self must be found/recognized by the daily communications we have together, not alone by oneself.
What could Monsieur Teste have found/missed during his lonesome struggle as a trial of reflection on himself? During this reading, I have gotten the impression that Teste tried to gaze at the core of self in his mind so straightly with a iron mental. The self... As for me, in my mind, I find that a literal "evil" essence that has been hot as magma. As I have written above, I can't see it directly because it would drive me crazy at last. Teste's lonesome reflection on himself means that he must have a very, very strong mentality.
After that morning reading activity, I went to a used book store and bought a Japanese famous artist Tadanori Yokoo's journal [横尾忠則『横尾忠則の画家の日記』]. Returning to my group home, I had lunch and took a nap. TBH, I couldn't have slept well so my head didn't work well so I couldn't enjoy any books anymore, but just stayed still on my bed with Haruomi Hosono's ambient music.
