At Kiel, as elsewhere, a day goes by somehow or other.

Between going and staying the day wavers,

The day, even when it is at the longest, is quickly spent.

It is daylight for him. ...

But now the route that used to wear out a solid day barely takes two hours.

Bright youth passes swiftly as a thought.

Daytime was a shift, each one endured like a quantum of life, all the short-term planning leading up to another bout of darkness, little thought given to stringing those days into something useful, some chain of valuable pearls. Just another day to survive.

Most people are just trying to get through the day. I want you to learn how to get from the day.

The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.

The night is just a part of the day

I pass lightly through the reactionary darkness.

That’s all. Just that pocket of warmth in a freezing lake. Just a glancing ray of sunshine. A star that winks once, twice, then turns away. Death without the dying.

Walk until the darkness is a memory and you become the sun on the next traveler's horizon.

In that way you recall, suddenly, sharply, in daylight, a trace of a dream of the previous night — but even as you recall it, it begins to fade.