Sublime

The “world,” after all, was still a place of bottomless horror. It was by no means a place of childlike simplicity where everything could be settled by a single then-and-there decision.

The old man didn’t reply. My question hung awkwardly in the air for a moment, and finally grew hazy and disappeared.

The businessperson’s amortization is factored into his tax bill, but what about the poet’s “amortization of the heart and soul”? The businessperson gets a break for his debts, but can the poet claim the same advantage for his indebtedness “to everything/about which/I have not yet written”?

It must have been after reading these that he had hit on the idea of suicide, as if he were planning a picnic.

He is more than clever, he is amusing. He is more than successful, he is alive. You will find him stranded here and there in all sorts of unknown positions, almost always in unsuccessful positions.

The beauty of Basho’s prose, however, took the negative aspects of old age, loneliness, and death and imbued them with a serene sense of beauty.

just so long as they aren’t psychos.

denouement.

Though only partway through, I reflected on what I had read thus far. This had been a dismal life. Right, I thought. That explains why his life cost me almost nothing.