Wednesday, December 21, 2016

En attendant Mann (Oh!)

"One can say that he consumed one whole week waiting for the return of that single hour every seven days -- and waiting means racing ahead, means seeing time and the present not as a gift, but as a barrier, denying and negating their value, vaulting over them in your mind. Waiting, people say, is boring. But in actuality, it can just as easily be diverting, because it devours quantities of time without our ever experiencing or using them for their own sake. One could say that someone who does nothing but wait is like a glutton whose digestive system processes great masses of food without extracting any useful nourishment. One could go further and say that just as undigested food does not strengthen a man, time spent in waiting does not age him. Granted, such pure an unalloyed waiting practically never happens."

Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain


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