Hopscotch - pg. 96

She will never suspect that she has condemned me to read Spinoza. A strange judge, a judge with her hands, with her racing down the street, a judge because she can just look at me and leave me naked, a judge by being silly and unhappy and upset and dull and less than anything. By everything I have known from my bitter knowledge, with my rusty slide rule of a college graduate and enlightened man, by all of that judge. Fall down, swallow, with those sharp scissors with which you cut the sky of Saint-Germain-des Pres, pluck out these eyes that look without seeing, I have quickly been condemned without appeal to those blue gallows to which the hands of the woman caring for her son have raised me,let the execution be quick, quickly back to the false order of being alone and recovering one's self-sufficiency, self-knowledge, self-awareness. And with so much knowledge a useless anxiety to pity something, to have it rain here inside, so that at long last it will start to rain and smell of earth and living things, yes, living things at long last.