Eugenio Montale

I've been thinking about the transience of everything. Not just the big things like a person's lifetime or fortune or fame. I'm talking about the little things, like a bad mood, a headache, a broken nail. Everything passes and people move on. Or they forget.

I've been working on a deal that has taken my life, along with my sleeping hours with it. I am consumed by this transaction. At night, I dream about the papers I need to draft. While at a dinner party, I will remember something and scribble a note on a piece of paper to remind myself later. I am all about the deal right now.

But then I think this deal will close at the end of the week and that will be the end of it. I will move on and work on something else. This week will just be another busy week in what has quickly become a very busy life. In a couple of years I might forget what the whole fuss was about. That week I slept 10 hours in 5 days. What was I working on then again?

After a brief moment of reflection, I slip into the eveloping demands of the job again. I vacillate between giving a kidney for this deal to close and going all existential about the entire exercise.

According to S., this constant mental push and pull contributes to my heightened "wakefulness". I don't really know what she means, but it sounds pretty good.

...

Eugenio Montale won the Nobel prize for literature the year I was born. He must have led a life dedicated to his craft. Spent years agonizing over his work. No one remembers.