I should read a book, I said to myself. It’s been far too long (Nir’s book doesn’t count). I had a couple of those cheap editions of out-of-copyright works they sell at Steimatzki, and I picked up Frankenstein. I didn’t get far:
But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to
paperblog, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine.