Jean-Paul Sartre - Nausea (Penguin Modern Classics)

The best thing would be to write down everything that happens from day to day. To keep a diary in order to understand. To neglect no nuances or little details, even if they seem unimportant, and above all to classify them. I must say how I see this table, the street, people, my packet of tobacco, since these are the things which have changed. I must fix the exact extent and nature of this change.

For example, there is a cardboard box which contains my bottle of ink. I ought to try to say how I saw it before and how I anything but note down carefully and in the greatest detail everything that happens.

Naturally I can no longer write anything definite about that business on Saturday and the day before yesterday I am already too far away from it; all that I can say is that in neither case was there anything people would ordinarily call an event. On Saturday the children were playing ducks and drakes, and I wanted to throw a pebble into the sea like them. At that moment I stopped, dropped the pebble and walked away. I imagine I must have looked rather bewildered, because the children laughed behind my back.

So much for the exterior. What happened inside me didnt leave any clear traces. There was something which I saw and which disgusted me, but I no longer know whether I was looking at the sea or at the pebble. It was a flat pebble, completely dry on one side, wet and muddy on the other. I held it by the edges, with my fingers wide apart to avoid getting them dirty.

The day before yesterday, it was much more complicated. There was also that series of coincidences and misunderstandings which I cant explain to myself. But Im not going to amuse myself by putting all that down on paper. Anyhow, its certain that I was frightened or experienced some other feeling of that sort. If only I knew what I was frightened of, I should already have made considerable progress.

The odd thing is that I am not at all prepared to consider myself insane, and indeed I can see quite clearly that I am not: all these changes concern objects. At least, that is what Id like to be sure about.

Perhaps it was a slight attack of insanity after all. There is no longer any trace of it left. The peculiar feelings I had the other week strike me as quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them. This evening I am quite at ease, with my feet firmly on the ground. This is my room, which faces north-east. Down below is the rue des Mutils and the shunting yard of the new station. From my window I can see the red and white flame of the Rendez-vous des Cheminots at the corner of the boulevard Victor-Noir. The Paris train has just come in. People are coming out of the old station and dispersing in the streets. I can hear footsteps and voices. A lot of people are waiting for the last tram. They must make a sad little group around the gas lamp just under my window. Well, they will have to wait a few minutes more: the tram wont come before a quarter to eleven. I only hope no commercial travellers are going to come tonight: I do so want to sleep and have so much sleep to catch up on. One good night, just one, and all this business would be swept away.

A quarter to eleven: theres nothing more to fear if they were coming, they would be here already. Unless its the day for the gentleman from Rouen. He comes every week, and they keep No. 2 for him, the first-floor room with a bidet. He may still turn up; he often drinks a beer at the Rendez-vous des Cheminots before going to bed. He doesnt make too much noise. He is quite short and very neat, with a waxed black moustache and a wig. Here he is now.

Well, when I heard him coming upstairs, it gave me quite a thrill, it was so reassuring: what is there to fear from such a regular world? I think I am cured.