"6 February [1922]. The comfort in hearing that someone had served in Paris, Brussels, London, Liverpool, had gone up the Amazon on a Brazilian steamer as far as the Peruvian border, with comparative ease had borne the dreadful sufferings of the winter campaign of the Seven Communities because he had been accustomed to hardship since his childhood. The comfort consists not only in the demonstration that such things are possible, but in the pleasure one feels when one realizes that with these achievements on the one level, much at the same time must have necessarily been achieved on the other level, much must have been wrung from clenched fists. It is possible, then." -- Franz Kafka, Diaries

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Brilliant first day of what surely will be a pivotal year--for someone, anyway. I sit in the sunbeam from the skylight, which this time of year sweeps right to left across my bedpillows where I work, blinding me, and again I pause to search online for cheap raffia hats.