When I am happy, I like to reject things, as if my happiness were equal to their loss, and, in fact, measures so excessively that, regardless of what it is that one rejects, the scale clamps down firmly upon the other side. But when I am sad, I feel a need to hold reasons for everything, and at that time even the most inconsequential things have to be true. Doubtless this remit cannot be satisfied, for if truth does not represent itself by force, then why should all reasons feel compelled to bear it in equal measure? Nevertheless, I find myself often enough holding my breath, not exactly searching for anything, or pretending to myself that life cannot be otherwise. I am waiting beside some sentence affirming each failure as a failure forever, since the same world spins upon its pin. But I am not looking at that sentence, even though I know it's there. Even if hitherto it has always forced itself to the fore at times like these, there must remain some measure of doubt as to whether times like these are themselves authentic, and therefore whether this time things might be different.