And I feel that this story has already become a failure, in that I tried at first to keep the anecdotes from turning into stories but didn’t succeed. But that was expected to a certain extent, and won’t be a problem. I may even feel a small private sense of victory in letting this story come, in the end, to a failure.
But still, rambling on — I think that the fact that time is probably the only thing I can waste makes it possible for me to ramble on — is making me very uncomfortable, and even bringing me displeasure that doesn’t come with great pleasure, but that’s probably something I need to risk as well. Anyway, another problem, although not more serious, is that I’m losing more and more interest in this story I began to write without much ambition, or if such a thing is possible, losing interest I never had in the first place, which is because I have a hard time doing something with an earnest desire, or with a desire disguised as an earnest desire. One of the biggest practical difficulties I have in writing is that too often, I lose interest gradually or suddenly in what I’m writing. But what I’ve lost interest in is not just this story. I’ve lost nearly all interest in nearly all things. Perhaps the only thing I have left to do is to write about the slightly interesting process of losing interest in something. Nevertheless, the paradox of writing in order to not write anymore, the paradox that I could write until there’s nothing left to write, that it would be difficult not to write until then, will keep me writing.
I have no choice but to keep going, whether I get lost in my story or find my way. I fumble as I write, as if reading Braille, fumbling in my mind. Perhaps I can write without ceasing, as if I didn’t care, somewhat carelessly, because I’m not genuinely interested. For there’s a kind of interest you can show because you’re not genuinely interested, a kind of concern you can show because you’re not genuinely concerned, for there are such things. I could probably go on writing this, for I know too well that it is perhaps perfectly useless.
If the purpose of travel, in a way, is to shatter illusions about an unknown world, my travels are true to their purpose in that respect. A logic could be developed, a logic that’s perhaps forced, that it’s best not to travel at all in order to maintain an illusion, and in fact, when I considered traveling, I was always conflicted between maintaining an illusion by not traveling, and seeing an illusion get shattered by traveling. I feel the same way about Turin, which I felt an urge to visit at one point, which brings the dilemma of whether to go to Turin, a city where the illusions I had about it were sure to get shattered the moment I set foot there, and see my illusions surely get shattered, or not go there and maintain my illusions. Perhaps the dilemma could be solved by maintaining my illusions for a while by not going to Turin for some time yet in the future, and then going there and seeing them get shattered.
I don’t feel much of an interest in majestic historical relics that show traces of time, or beautiful and impressive natural objects. Rarely did a place or a structure I actually saw surpass what I saw on television or in a photograph. I’ve almost never been moved by a place or a structure the way you should be moved. The Heidelberg Castle, which looked picturesque in a photograph, moved me so little, if at all, when I actually went there one summer that I couldn’t believe my eyes — at least, I was much less moved by the castle than I was by the sight of a black girl spinning around to extricate herself from her long scarf as her mother held on to the end — and the same went true for the old Hindu ruins in an Asian jungle that was very moving. The reason why a certain place or structure looked all right on television or in a photograph was because I could contemplate some interesting thoughts I had while looking at them.
I left behind the Heidelberg Castle and went to see the Neuschwanstein Castle, another famous old castle in Germany, and I liked it much more when I hadn’t actually seen it, shrouded in mist and surrounded by Bavarian coniferous forests, and standing tall at the top of a steep mountain in a fortress-like atmosphere. And that was because I left the mist-shrouded castle after learning some facts surrounding the castle, such as that the man who built the castle was Ludwig II, who was fascinated by Wagner and sponsored him, and identified himself with the mythical German heroes of Wagner operas and had himself painted to look like them, and was so handsome that he looked like a hero, and liked swans so much that he had all the door handles decorated with a swan motif, and liked to go around in the nude, and died in a lake near the castle, although it’s unclear whether the death was a suicide or a homicide.
I was able to swim for a little while in the lake below the Neuschwanstein Castle, whose water was so cold that it would be difficult to dip your foot in it even in the middle of summer, and then take a nap while drying off, which was an experience that more than made up for the disappointment at the Heidelberg Castle. And while sleeping, I had a dream that I had joined a sort of guerilla movement and was in a fierce battle against an unknown enemy in the far off Amazonian jungle in Bolivia, but there was something that gave me a harder time than fighting in the jungle, which was none other than fighting back the diarrhea that was about to explode, and in the end I woke up and actually relieved myself with urgency in the forest. I could see why I had a dream about getting diarrhea, but not why I had a dream set in the Amazonian jungle in Bolivia, when I was at a lake surrounded by the forest near the Neuschwanstein Castle.
Many times I’ve been to a certain place where I couldn’t see anything because it was shrouded in mist, and each time I felt very lucky on the whole. For in some places with thick mist, I didn’t need anything, just the mist.
One winter when I went to Venice and arrived at St. Mark’s Square the mist was so thick that, to exaggerate a bit, I couldn’t even see the bag I was carrying, and, to exaggerate a bit more, I couldn’t even see my hand that was holding the bag, and to exaggerate some more, I couldn’t even see myself — a voice inside me says that a story like this should be exaggerated, and then exaggerated some more, but I’m ignoring it now — and in the end, the only part I saw of St. Mark’s Basilica, facing the square, was the entrance. Nevertheless, I saw a blue balloon in the air, tied to a string in the hand of a child being led out of the entrance by his mother, which made quite an impression on me. I could have taken a look inside the basilica but there were too many people, and in the end, I stood in St. Mark’s Square, which Napoleon called the finest drawing room in Europe, and saw the belfry next to the basilica, which was rebuilt after it collapsed in the early twentieth century, although I didn’t see a spire which I may have been able to see if I climbed up the steep staircase and if there was a spire, although I don’t know if there was a spire on the basilica, and saw the bottom of the belfry as I recalled a story surrounding the belfry, about how a cat was crushed to death when the belfry collapsed, and, suddenly, I recalled a thought I once had, without any grounds, a thought that seemed even more plausible because it was without any grounds, that cats may have been the first victims of the French Revolution, and that there must have been many other revolutions and wars whose first victims were cats or other animals.