Today, while I was reshelfing books in the library, I again became aware of how intense a dislike for religion I have developed. It is amazing to me that I ever prostrated myself in the synagogue, that a sudden rush of religious agitation came about me like a fever, that I was prepared to sacrifice my whole life on the altar. I cannot countenance such things -- I have not seen the face of God -- I have only seen the face of man; it is not without blemishes, but cool and serene, the color of ivory, rising like a thick mask from the depths, gazing on a drizzling sky. The eyes stare out two holes of blackness into anguish, the mouth parted sensuous lips in a silent scream. What I am most reminded of is that cancerous blur of color on the edge of a bridge, clasped into itself and recoiling in an ever-reverberating, solemn-eternal horror. Is there anything else? The sky, the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars -- these substances which envelop us and develop within us. Reflecting on how I have passed from the mystical to the real, from prejudice to some semblance of self-awareness, I can only feel that it is remarkable that the disease spread even to the very extremities of my brain, almost threatening my heart, my being; and it is remarkable that there has been a convalescence at all, that I am not now a throbbing and pulsating pustule gravitating to some mass of rubble in the streets of Jerusalem; another wispy face engaged in rapid and callow argument with "Torah scholars".

And yet I must be vaguely aware that there are many sicknesses, many diseases that plague mankind. I say man and not woman, I have few political convictions, I have not come into even my own complete confidence, I am complacently indifferent to justice. I stutter words like "love" or "duality", morality, happiness, but what knowledge do I have of any of them? Whatever I have read in books, I have not learned it neither do I see -- and if I were to read Augustine, I might very well turn back to "god" (which I will not capitalize in utter defiance) in imitation; and I have very great admiration for him (Augustine, not god). If I were to begin reading the Bible again, much of it, no doubt my mind would be filled with these ancient imaginings. As it is, with the time that I spend reading the classics, it is a wonder I don't worship Athena or Apollo, Hermes or Mars; but then again, they are distant friends, never far from my mind, and as even in my moments of most sincere skepticism yet I still held some sympathy for monotheistic thought, I can not say I am entirely without sympathy for whatever cults belonged to the Greeks. I believe in the abstract muses if I will not follow them, and I listen for their cry from the darkness even if I do not heed their (always) words. I am such a changeable creature -- I can have no surety that I will even survive to see the next year let alone live by my present convictions -- and to lose those convictions is, in a sense, to condemn who I am and what I stand for to the eternal void.