How foolish it is to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. - Hermann Hesse

I am a star in the firmament
that observe the world, despises the world
and consumed in its heat.

I am the sea by night in a storm
the sea shouting that accumulates new sins
and to the ancient makes recompense.

I am exiled from your world
of pride polite, by pride defrauded,
I am the king without crown.

I am the passion without words
without stones of the hearth, without weapons in the war,
is my same force that make me sick

Like an attack this melancholy comes from time to time. I don't know at what intervals, and slowly covers my sky with clouds. It begins with an unrest in the heart, with a premonition of anxiety, probably with my dreams at night. People, houses, colors, sounds that otherwise please me become dubious and seem false. Music gives me a headache. All my mail becomes upsetting and contains hidden arrows. At such times, having to converse with people is torture and immediately leads to scenes... Anger, suffering, and complaints are directed at everything, at people, at animals, at the weather, at God, at the paper in the book one is reading, at the material of the very clothing one has on. But anger, impatience, complaints and hatred have no effect on things and are deflected from everything, back to myself.

When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginnings and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree.