I used to love this book when I was in college. It was written by Roland Barthes. It’s called A Lover’s Discourse.
One of my favorite sections back then was titled “Waiting”. For some reason, I really liked the following paragraph:
A mandarin fell in love with a courtesan. ‘I shall be yours,’ she told him, ‘when you have spent a hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool, in my garden, beneath my window.’ But on the ninety-ninth night, the mandarin stood up, put the stool under his arm, and went away.
Today, in essence of my reaction from last night, I’d like to choose the following:
The anxiety of waiting is not coninuously violent; it has its matte moments; I am waiting, and everything around my waiting is stricken with unreality: in this caf