could do anything
wanted to do but found there
was nothing to do
Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider — those in actual destitution or physical suffering — this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone.
But at three o’clock in — the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work — ; and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.
At that hour the tendency is — to refuse to face things as long as possible by retiring into — an infantile dream — but one is continually startled out of this by various contacts with the world.
One meets these occasions as quickly and carelessly as possible and retires once more back into the dream, hoping that things will adjust themselves by some great material or spiritual bonanza.
But as the withdrawal persists there is less and less chance of the bonanza — one is not waiting for the fade-out of a single sorrow, but rather being an unwilling witness of an execution, the disintegration of one’s own personality …
So there was not an ‘I’ any more — not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect — save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more.
It was strange to have no self — to be like a little boy left alone in a big house, who knew that now he could do anything he wanted to do, but found that there was nothing that he wanted to do –
And in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.
As Big Bill put it, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time.
(From The crack-up with other pieces and stories, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1945, James Laughlin, New York.)
No Haiku For You 