it's come to the point where i've realized that i can bring so little with me that i'm just letting go entirely, and treating it like starting anew, ala israelites in the desert. went for one last dinner with WH a few days ago and he looked absolutely crestfallen when i told him i was leaving most of my books behind, as if that was the moral equivalent of killing kittens. what i will undoubtedly end up doing is buying doubles of everything in a frenzy of insecurity, and then ruing it when i next relocate to tanzania or wherever the hell it is this stupid life brings me.

and, to you-know-who-you-are, from the power and the glory, graham greene:

It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhiliaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times; even in danger and misery the pendulum swings