MS-BRML-NWWR-2-38

[0669] too difficult to say, for me. [0670] And even my sense of identity was
veiled in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just
seen I think. [0671] And so on for all the other things which mocked my
senses. [0672] Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and
particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no
names but thingless names.

[0673] I say that now, but after all what
do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon
me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. [0674] All
I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes
a handsome little sum, with a beginning^, a middle^, and an end as in
the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. [0675] And truly
i^t little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing.

[0676] Saying is inventing. [0677] Wrong, and rightly so. [0678] You invent nothing,
you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all
you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum ^[] one
^[17] day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is
wept. [0679] To hell with it anyway.^[]] [0680] Where was I.

[0681] Unable to remember
the name of my town, I resolved to stop by the ^curb, to wait for
a passer-by with a friendly and intelligent air, and then to take
off my hat and to say, with my smile, I beg your pardon, Sir,
excuse me^{, S}ir, what is the name of this town, if you please?

[0682] For
the word once let fall I would know if it was the right word, the
one I was seeking in my memory, or another, [0683] and so would know
where I stood. [0684] This resolution, actually formed as I rode along,
was never to be carried out, an absurd mishap prevented it.

[0685] Yes,
my resolutions were remarkable in this, that they were no sooner
formed than something always happened to prevent their execution.
[0686] That must be why I am even less resolute now than then, just as
then I was less so too, than I once had been. [0687] But to tell the