How delightful it is to be here. I woke up early, when the stained-glass windows were covered with fog, and now it is a splendid morning. I contemplate the bunch of white lilies on my table; since I came to the Netherlands, I've never failed to buy flowers, this is a secret deal that I've made with the country.
Now I will go to the market to buy fresh fish and vegetables and cry, as I walk through bridges and narrow passageways, over the exquisite, excruciating beauty of my Paradise. In the meanwhile, I'm thinking about the books that will be written these coming years. They are roughly the books I have planned since a long time, but now it is time to give them thickness and existence. Tesserae, a little essay in Mediterranean studies, about the circulation of ideas, Eroticism of Trace, Poetics of the Void as announced in my project, a book on Morocco I proposed to Ossolineum, but that I might eventually write in English, Intrusive Spirit of the Desert, about Islamic intellectuals in Europe, and Eremos, a culminating volume, perhaps a collection of essays on transgression and extra-cultural becoming that may go beyond the Mediterranean or Andalusian focus to give the account of my idea in rougher, more daring brushstrokes. These coming years I may have time and I may have money. My part of the deal is to make sure that the whole thing doesn't run short of novel concepts and insights. I feel a need of concentrating; no more dispersion that was tempting me only some weeks ago. I need to create a clear, recognisable outcome with which I might identify completely, something to give a definition of me just in one striking sentence. I need to have these things ready, ahead of the schedule. And as soon as money and opportunities come, I will be able to throw these things on the market. And yes, to occupy the place that will become empty at the death of Giorgio Agamben.
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