Father Goriot, could save him, and thought about the surrealist poet and architect who attempted to create a surrealistic, ideal garden in the middle of a Mexican jungle in the past century, and thought that an ideal world could exist only in ideal thoughts, and thought, while listening to Eric Satie, about the fact that he lived in extreme poverty in the later part of his life, and wondered if his music conveyed the sentiments of a man facing extreme poverty, and thought about what Salvador Dali meant when he said that Jackson Pollock’s style was like the indigestion that goes with fish soup, and thought, while reading the original English version of “Jabberwocky,” the strange poem by Lewis Carroll that’s almost impossible to translate, that it could perhaps be translated if long footnotes were added, and also thought about staying in the English seaside village where he is said to have written Alice in Wonderland, and thought about how Freud was a cocaine addict, and how Trakl, the poet, drank chloroform and spent time lying on a sofa, hallucinating, and thought about Trakl’s younger sister, who, invited to someone’s home for dinner, gave a cheerful musical performance, after which she went into the next room and killed herself with a gun, and wondered why I felt at home with bizarre things and felt at ease listening to music that could make you feel uncomfortable, such as Schonberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” and thought that there was considerable reason for it, and thought that I was eating too much fish, and wondered how many fish I must’ve eaten so far in my life, and thought that I asked this question almost invariably when I ate fish, and thought about how I had to make a living by translating foreign languages, and thought about the many dead authors I knew who translated foreign literature and then stopped thinking about them, and wondered what it was that made me reluctant to write something that could be called a love story or novel, and thought about the fact that I was always trying to imagine an unimaginable world, and thought about the frantic nature of certain feelings I had, and thought about feelings that didn’t last long, and feelings that, once there, wouldn’t leave easily, and thought about the fights I had with mosquitoes from time to time at home, fights that truly seemed like fights, and thought that since plants died most of the time from too much watering, one way of keeping a plant from dying, though not the most sure way, could be to find out how often a plant should be watered by bringing a plant home and not watering it until it was wilting almost to the point of death, thereby finding out how long it can survive without water, and thought about the time I went on watering a plant I had even though it was clearly dead already, unable to easily accept its death, and recalled something that I seemed to have heard from someone, that pouring fresh animal blood into a pot of red roses turns the roses blood red, and thought that I could grow red roses and pour chicken blood or pig blood into the pot, and thought about the way my attention went from one thing to another, and thought about things that were theoretically possible but realistically impossible or unrealizable in the near future, and thought that for some time now my life has been a long and difficult and tedious yet pleasant struggle against realism, and thought that my favorite part of speech may be adjectives, and thought again about the limitations of my native language, something I always thought about, and above all, thought about a technical way of making long sentences in my native language, which had no relative pronouns, which made making long sentences difficult, and thought about the pain in my knee joint which I felt more often and acutely, and thought, in regard to that pain, about the process in which something physical was perceived, and thought about devoting my entire life to doing something I couldn’t finish even in a lifetime, for instance, writing down all the proper nouns — which, even among nouns, were the most perfect in themselves, but unlike other nouns which might no longer be used, whose object of designation was always in danger of disappearing — in all the languages of the world, dead or still in use, and adding explanation and footnotes on those words, and thought, while scratching my thigh that was itchy with a mosquito bite, that you could see the world in a different way if you knew all the proper nouns in the world, although this was impossible, and thought, while having intercourse and looking at the full moon which happened to come into view out the window, about the fact that amphibians liked to mate when there was a full moon, and thought that I thought with too much articulation even though I got tired of doing so at times, and wondered why I wasn’t easily drawn to simple and ordinary things, and thought that some of the things I wrote were things I came up with at a cemetery where Christian missionaries of the past were buried after being persecuted and decapitated, and thought that it might make me feel good to go to an office I happened to see one day while walking on the street, an office that was supposed to be a place of research on the magic art of shortening distances and the art of flight, and listen distractedly to the nonsensical things that the people there talked about, and thought about the obvious fact that if I hadn’t been born I wouldn’t have existed in the first place, and to that end, and felt indifferent about it, and touching some kind of a lump somewhere on my body, which I happened to find although I didn’t know when or how it had formed, wondered what shape it would take on in the days to come, and thought of the times, while seeing something develop in a strange way, I thought of a reason that didn’t seem appropriate as a reason for something, and thought that there didn’t necessarily have to be a reason, that it was better for there to be no such thing as a reason, or to not try to find a reason, but still tried to find a reason, and after seeing the horrors of a war that’s still going on now, thought of the strange goats I saw on television one day, which passed out even at the slightest provocation, such as the sound of applause or the sight of an open umbrella, and smiled to myself, and wondered if the goats, which looked as if they found some kind of a pleasure in passing out, found real pleasure in passing out, and thought that it was after I’d seen the horrors of a war that I smiled, thinking about strange goats, and recalled the masturbating monkey I saw somewhere while traveling, and thought about the misfortune of polar bears that were losing their home because of melting glaciers, as well as their daily hardship, and thought, not seriously, about the issue of Germans and Jews, or not thought about it at all, and thought, above all, about my body, which wasn’t healthy, contrary to what people thought, and recalling the fact that Novalis, the writer, was an expert on mining, and Keats, the poet, was a licensed surgeon, wondered if there wasn’t something I could do professionally besides writing, and having been constipated for several days and sitting on the toilet and applying great force to a certain part of my body, thought about the expression “with all your might,” or “with your heart and soul,” and thought that everything that was before my eyes at that moment was staying where they were with all their might, or with their heart and soul, and thought about things that could be seen endlessly moving (seas and clouds, for example), and things that seemed stationary but were moving (clouds and deserts, for example), and things that moved without being seen (deserts and excrement in the body, for example), and wondered what kinds of things in today’s world would be considered uncivilized and barbarous to mankind in the distant future, and thought about how much despair or joy Newton must have felt while teaching math at Trinity College at Cambridge when none of his students showed up for his lecture, which happened from time to time because he taught in such an abstract way, and despaired at the fact that what I wanted to write more than anything, perhaps, was something without a beginning or an end, but that it was impossible, and above all, thought, somewhat irritably, about how irritating it was to think repeatedly about certain human concerns regarding human suffering, which would never come to an end, and thought about the artist who, suffering from Alzheimer’s, tried to put herbicide in coffee, thinking it was whiskey (should I stop here? — this is the narrator speaking. I could stop, but I could go on as much as I want, and I do want to go on — this is the author speaking, in a more playful way), and thought about the fact that I could think only in a way that was much too complicated, and wondered if I might go insane, if only for that reason, and wondered if being able to think in a way that was much too complicated was a talent, whether it would be better to discard it or nurture it, and wondered why I liked to say something nonsensical in a clever way so that it made sense, and thought about how the expression “retarded” is used to mean