Down there in the distance lay the sea. But there was no more room in me for imaginings about the sea. I had other things to do. I had tried to lose myself, I hadn't wanted to be face to face with my own life anymore, but everywhere I kept finding it. I was always coming back to myself. My wanderings were over. No more knocking about for me ... The world had closed in . . . We had come to the end! Like at the carnival! It's not enough to be sad; there ought to be some way to start the music up again and go looking for more sadness . . . But not for me . . . We may not admit it, but what we really want is to have our youth back again . . . We ought to be ashamed . . . Anyway, I wasn't prepared to endure any more! . . . Yet I hadn't gone as far in life as Robinson! . . . All in all, I hadn't succeeded ... I hadn't conceived even one good, sound idea, like his idea of getting himself bumped off ... That idea was bigger than my big head, bigger than all the fear that was in it, a fine, a magnificent idea to die with . . . How many lives would I need to make myself an idea more powerful than anything in the world? No saying. A flop! My ideas went rattling around in my head with lots of space between them. They were like faint, flickering little candles, trembling throughout a lifetime in the middle of a ghostly, abominable universe.