For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
The book begins, Friday is fixated on digging a tunnel through the chalk cliff at the edge of their land (with is perhaps a little eccentric), and is actually making progress.
Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ’em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan.
Friday January 23rd. That is the last time I go to a disco.
A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish – but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.
But I needed none of all this Precaution; for never Man had a more faithful, loving, sincere Servant, than Friday was to me; without Passions, Sullenness or Designs, perfectly oblig’d and engag’d; his very Affections were ty’d to me, like those of a Child to a Father;
The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.
It was an ordinary day, a Friday, twenty minutes til lunchtime, five hours til quitting time and the weekend, ten months til vacation, thirty-seven years til retirement. Then the phone rang.
Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.
It shouldn't make any difference, but Friday and Saturday nights are the worst. They're the worst because the loneliness is magnified.
And so I rehabilitate myself – staying up late this Friday night in spite of vowing to go to bed early, because it is more important to capture moments like this, keen shifts in mood, sudden veering of direction – than to lose it in slumber.