I think I am only myself when I write, it is the only place where I am at home, and it is my only nation. Every single movement in my life since 2007 seems like a retarded and erratic attempt to go back to Jerusalem… Everything in my life seems like some very poor in-between stations circumventing the prospect of landing in the golden city again. I have to do my best to try and get the Rosenzweig Fellowship; it is the only way I can feel alive at all, everything else is just grey and delusional, even reality, this somber reality in which I have no spirits even to change my underwear, no willingness to live or to remember anything. I behave like a vampire, being able to come out of my grave only at night in order to spend these long hours with myself and reconstruct my world anew. During the day everything is just a long sequence of headaches, insatiable hunger and sexual desire, mourning and godlessness. Somehow I think that the path I should follow is that of going to Winchester, everything else seems a little dry but I wonder what kind of nice and warm person is Daisy Neijmann in responding to my long exposés time after time. I am afraid of facing the prospect of what I am writing on the original letter to Santiago; I might be as well very disappointed with the results but I certainly hope I am not. Somehow I think Katherina remembers me all the time as an obstacle and shadow in her life; but Eveline and Ivan have definitely forgotten about me. I don´t think what I write can be called literature, certainly not after I read Cunningham´s book – I think I might never be able to aspire at that much. As my life shatters I feel emotionally very healthy and day after day more prepared to face the world but not quite yet: I should begin with washing my clothes and looking after my own life, but I am yet unable to do it. I want Santiago´s letter to sound like a Gothic epic and I have to work very hard on it, so that I shall spend today the whole day with it and work on the translation over the weekend. The translation is so far the most important enterprise of all because on that depends that callous Prof. Goodman-Thau will dare to address this commoner. I wish I didn´t have to sleep, but more than anything I wish I didn´t have to see my father at all, ever again… I know how hard this sounds, but there´s just too much of nothing in between us, I by no means would want him dead or anything like that, I´m not stupid, but full-time distance seems to be the only way for us to be able to show any kind of compassion or sympathy for each other. He is not in the least worried about me, it´s just too taxing for him to think how to get rid of me for good. It seems that five years weren´t enough, so next time I should try to do ten years. My only sorrow at leaving this house is my brother, I´m so deeply attached to him now and I don´t think he would forgive me if I left abruptly but even with a broken heart it is my obligation to do it. It can´t be postponed, least apocalypse will come now. Sorry, we´re past it even. I have exactly one week to show something for myself. One week.
I think of Guilel and weep bitterly as I read the poem he wrote me on the occasion of the damn book. I am so lifeless that I can´t even weep in sobs, it is all burnt inside. Mt. Scopus! If anything, I want to die on the soil of Jerusalem and vanish unto its golden-grey soil overlooking the Sultan´s pool. I am so homesick that I can´t go on. I´m so without consolation, so haunted by my own recklessness
ISRAEL
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