Em que pensavas?*

What was I thinking? Of a passage in Proclus which says that Orpheus ruled over the silver race meaning those who led a 'silver' life; on Balthazar's mantelpiece presumably among the pipe-cleaners and the Indian wood-carving of monkeys which neither saw, spoke nor heard evil, under a magic pentacle from Pythagoras. What was I thinking? The foetus in its waxen wallet, the locust squatting in the horn of the wheat, an Arab quoting a proverb which reverberated in the mind. 'The memory of man is as old as misfortune.'

Lawrence Durrell, "Balthazar", The Alexandria Quartet, Faber & Faber, 2009

*Agora é decorar isto, porque esta é a melhor resposta a dar da próxima vez que nos perguntarem em que pensávamos.