More money gone

I fell down yesterday. I bought my first book of 2006, despite a pledge to myself on January 1 to refrain until I had read all 20 books sitting on my desk.

I bought Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, not actually on a whim but on someone's recommendation. I hope it's as rewarding as it promises to be.

What am I in the totality? What are the molecules in the pencil perched behind my ear as I write this, in the totality? Is there any difference between them and me?

Pessoa:

"There is an equal, abstract destiny for men and for things; both have an equally indifferent designation in the algebra of the world's mystery."

In other words, life is absurd, I'm thinking, or am I conflating philosophies again?

++++++++++++++++++++

The list of books I've read so far this year is stunningly short:

1. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
2. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
3. Fifty Best American Short Stories: 1915-1965, edited by Martha Foley
4. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
5. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad