[p. 100r]
[1677] eye, the eye pricks too, that's wrong too.
[1678] Round the shank, between the two corks, a wisp of black thread clings.
[1679] It is a pretty little object, like a - no, it is like nothing.
[1680] The bowl of my pipe, though I never used a tobacco-pipe.
[1681] I must have found it somewhere, on the ground, when out walking.
[1682] There it was, in the grass, thrown away because it could no longer serve, the stem having broken off (I suddenly remember that) just short of the bowl.
[1683] This pipe could have been repaired, but he must have said, Bah, I'll buy myself another.
[1684] But all I found was the bowl.
[1685] But all that is mere supposition.
[1686] Perhaps I thought it pretty, or felt for it that foul feeling of pity I have so often felt in the presence of things, especially little portable things in wood and stone, and which made me wish to have them about me and keep them always, so that I picke stooped and picked them up and put them in my pocket, often with tears, for I wept:to wept up to a great age, never having really evolved in the matter fields of affection and passion, in spite of my experiences.
[1687] And but for the company of these little objects which I picked up here and there, when out walking, and which sometimes gave me the impression that they too needed me, I might have been reduced to the society of nivce people or to the consolations of some religion or other, but I think not.
[1688] And I loved, I remember, as I walked along, with my hands deep in my pockets, for I am trying to speak of the time when I could still walk without a stick and a fortiori without crutches, I lobved to finger and caress the hard shapely objects that were there, in my deep pockets, it was my way of talking to them and reassuring them.
[1689] And I loved to fall asleep
[p. 101r]
[1689] holding in my hand a stone, a horse chestnut of a fir-apple or a cone, and I would be still holding it when I woke, my fingers closed over it, in spite of sleep which makes a rag of the body, so that it may rest.
[1690] And those of which I eawearied, or which were ousted by new loves, I threw awauy, that is to say I cast round for a place to lay them where they would be at peace forever, and no one ever find them short of an extraordinary hazard, and such places are few and far between, and I laid them there.
[1691] Or I buried them, or threw them into the sea, with all my strength as far as possible from the land, those I knew for certain would not float, even briefly.
[1692] But many a wooden friend too I have sent to the bottom, weighted with a stone.
[1693] Until I realized that was wrong of me.
[1694] For when the string is rotted they will rise to the surface, if they have not already done so, and return to the land, sooner or later.
[1695] In this wasy I disposed of things I loved but could no longer keep, because of new loves.
[1696] And ofeten I missed them.
[1697] But I had hidden them so well that even I could never find them again.
[1698] That's the style, as if I still had time to kill.
[1699] And so I have, deep down I know it well.
[1700] Then why play at being in a hurry?
[1701] I don't know.
[1702] Perhaps I am in a hurry after all, [1703] it was the impression I had a short time ago.
[1704] But my impressions.
[1705] And what after all if I were not so anxious as I make out to recall to mind all that is left to me of all I ever had? had, a good dozen objects at least to put it mildly?
[1706] No no, I must?.
[1707] Then it's something else.
[1708] Where were we?
[1709] My bowl.
[1710] So I never got rid of it.
[1711] I used it as a receptacle, I kept things in it, I wonder what I could have kept in it, so small
[p. 102r]
[1711] a space, and I made a little cap for it, out of tin.
[1712] Next.
[1713] Poor Macmann.
[1714] Decidedly it will never have been given to me to finish anything, except perhaps breathing.
[1715] One must not be greedy.
[1716] But is this how one chokes?
[1717] Presumably.
[1718] And the rattle, what about the rattle?
[1719] Perhaps it is not de rigueur after all.
[1720] To have vagitated and not be bloody well able to rattle.
[1721] How life dulls the power to protest to be sure.
[1723] I wonder what my last words will be, written, the others do not endure, but vanish, into thin air.
[1724] I shall never know.
[1725] I shall not finish this inventory either, a little bird tells me so, the paraclete perhaps, psittaceously named.
[1726] Be it so.
[1727] A club in any case, I can't help it, I must state the facts, without trying to understand, to the end.
[1728] There are moment moments when I feel I have been here always, perhaps even was born here. [1728|001] Then it passes.
[1729] That would explain many things.
[1730] Or that I have come back after a long absence.
[1731] But I have done with feelings and hypotheses.
[1732] This club is mine and that is all about it.
[1733] It is stained with blood, but insufficiently, insufficiently.
[1734] I have defended myself, ill, but I have defended myself.
[1735] That is what I tell myself sometimes.
[1736] One boot, originally yellow, I forget for which foot. [1737] The other, its fellow, has gone.
[1738] They took it away, at the beginning, before they realized I should never walk again.
[1739] And they left the other, in the hope I would be sadde saddened, seeing it theere, without its fellow.
[1740] Men are like that.
[1741] Or perhaps it is on top of the cupboard.
[1742] I have looked for it everywhere, with my stick, but I never thought of the top of the cupboard. [1742|001] Till now.
[1743] And as I shall never look for it any more, or anything else any more either on top of the cupboard or elsewhere anywhere else, it is no longer mine.
[p. 103r]
[1744] For only those things are mine the whereabouts of which I know ewell enough to be able to lay hold of them, if necessary, that is the definition I have adopted, to define my possessions. For otherwise there would be no end to it. But in any case there will be no end to it.
[1745] It did not greatly resemble - but it is wrong of me to dwell upon it - the one I have preserved, the yellow one, remarkable for the number of its eyeholes, I never saw a boot with so many eyeholes, useless for the most part, having ceased to be holes, and become slits.
[1746] All these things are together in the corner in a heap.
[1747] I could alay hold of them, even now, in the dark, I need only wish to do so.
[1748] I would identify them by touch, the message would flow all along the stick, I would hook the desired object and bring it over to the bed, I would hear it coming towards me over the floor, gliding, jogging, less and less dear, I would hoist it up on the bed in such a way as not to break the window or damage the ceiling, and at last I would have it in my hands.
[1749] If it was my hat I might put it on, that would remind me of the good old days, though I remember them sufficiently well.
[1750] It has lost its brim, it looks like a bell-glass to put over a melon.
[1751] In order to put it on and take it off you have to grasp it like a great ball, between your palms.
[1752] It is perhaps the only object in my possession the history of which I have not forgotten, I mean counting from the day it cbecame mine.
[1753] I know in what circumstances it lost its brim, I was there at the time, [1754] it was so that I might keep it on while I slept.
[1755] I should rather like it to be buried with me, w a harmless whim, but what steps should I take?
[1756] Mem, put it on on the off-chance, well wedged down, before it is
[p. 104r]
[1756] too late.
[1757] But all in due time.
[1758] Should I go on I wonder.
[1759] I feel iI am perhaps attributing to myself things I no longer possess and reporting as missing others that are not missing. And I feel there are others, over there in the corner, belonging to a third categor category, that of those of which I know nothing and with regard to which therefore there is little danger of my being wrong, or of my being right.
[1760] And I remind myself also that since I last went th through my possessions much water has passed beneath Butt Bridge, in both directions.
[1761] For I have sufficiently perished in this room to know that some things go out, and other things come in, through I know not what agency.
[1762] And among thsoe [ ] 
that go out there are some that come back, after a more or less prolonged absence, and others that never come back.
[1763] With the result that, among those that come in, some are familiar to me, others not.
[1764] I don't understand.
[1765] And, stranger still, there exists a whole family of objects, having apparently very little in common, which have never left me, since I have been here, but remained quiety quietly in their place, in the corner, s as in any ordinary uninhabited room.
[1766] Or else they were very quick.
[1767] How false all that rings.
[1768] But there is no guarantee th things will be ever thus.
[1769] I cannot account in any other way for the changing aspect of my possessions.
[1771] So that, strictly speaking, it is impossible for me to know, from one moment to the next, what is mine and what is not, according to my definition.
[1772] So I wonder if I should go on, I mean go on drawing up an inventory corresponding perhaps but faintly to the facts, aand if I should not rather cut it short and devote myself to another some other form of distraction,