More handwriting practice today. It’s clear from the first strokes of my pen that I’m feeling down, that my heart’s not in it, and I have no interest in talking myself around. Maybe I’m coming down with a cold, caught from Juan Ignacio or Pongo the dog, who’s feeling down today too. There could also be something about the weather that’s bothering us all. Most likely, though, is that my mood is the result of a dream I had this morning involving piles of dead, rotting, blood-covered rats and my grandmother. The dream, in turn, must be the result of everything I’ve been through in recent days (between the twelfth and twenty-first of this month). The figure of my grandmother in the dream surely corresponds to that of my mother in real life, since when I was at my mother’s side during those days, I often found myself thinking about her and my grandmother, and about how much my mother has come to resemble her mother with age. What’s more, there were very few moments during that period when I had a clear sense of being next to my mother: instead I felt, with a profound, spontaneous certainty that came from deep within me, that she was my grandmother.

In my dream last night, my grandmother lived in a house I was staying in; I was just passing through, as if visiting a new place, maybe a seaside resort. There were piles of dead rats in my bedroom, and then I started seeing them elsewhere around the house as well, especially in the kitchen. I said something about “calling the council or the police,” but in the end I didn’t. It was late, and besides, my grandmother seemed perfectly fine with what was going on, treating this situation that to me seemed so out of the ordinary as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

September 27

The important thing is to be very patient and concentrate hard, trying as much as possible to draw the letters one by one and giving no thought to the meanings of the words they’re forming—an operation which is almost the complete opposite of literature (especially because it involves slowing down my thinking, which is used to my typewriter and always wants to jump ahead, suggest new ideas, and make new connections between thoughts and images, concerned—it’s part of the job, I suppose—with the continuity and coherence of what’s being said).

I need to stick to simple phrases, then, however empty or insubstantial they sound. The moment I start paying attention to the content, I lose sight of the point of this therapy (i.e., drawing every single letter).