The Hand (2011) – Ellen Altfest
Valéry’s Cahiers/Notebooks cannot be hurried. His meticulously worded thoughts are often original and unsettling. Every few pages I go to my shelves (or the internet) to track down a reference or to follow an astonishing reflection that cannot be simply read in passing. I read with Pelikan M200 in hand and Moleskine on the desk beside me, scribbling furiously. Though I often annotate my books, these editions resist such behaviour.
This morning’s reading of the Cahiers is over. This following fragment is enough for hours of post-breakfast rumination. (I don’t know if I have characteristic thoughts or if I am anybody all the time.)
Certain ways of looking at things seem to be my hallmark. Sometimes I recognise my own mind. Not all thoughts seem to me to be characteristic or fundamental, but certain ones which, if they were lacking, I’d be different. But there aren’t many of them. So I’m particularly myself at certain times; and anybody the rest of the time. Alongside these characteristic thoughts, we should put the sorrows and intense feelings. Everything else is rustling leaves, vague ‘noises off’, superficiality
Time's Flow Stemmed 
The welcome steep decline in my lust for more books would no doubt immediately reverse itself if this set were placed before me. Thank god there’s no chance of my encountering it on this rock. Merely reading about it conjures images of a homeless shopping-cart lady (me), pushing her odd assortment of plastic-bagged valuables while shouting to no one in particular, “Sometimes I recognise my own mind!”
Maybe my own book lust will diminish when I too can shout, “Sometimes I recognise my own mind!”