Sometimes our words over run us, and we start to believe that they are our sole problem. That the words or the mass amounts of words we speak mean something and that they are the conflict when it’s what we are saying.
In Beginning Again he is having such deep self-analysis that he is “performing brain surgery on himself”. Wright describes those moments when we become so critical of ourselves that it is like we are delving deep into our brains but we can’t see ourselves properly. The room he is in is all mirrors forcing him to really look at himself. He doesn’t want to because all his flaws are over exaggerated in his mind. His saying that the room is poorly lit alludes to him hiding- or hiding parts of himself- in the room.
Franz stops and realizes where he went wrong and is asking himself why he is continuing to do these silly things to himself. There is a change of setting and he is sitting alone with the mountain. I think the mountain represents the parts of life that are unchanging and that never go away no matter if you do or not. This character- Li Po- sat with the mountain until he either dies or simply wavered away until there was nothing left to himself anymore.
I connected this to certain times in my life where I was so sad I would try to pinpoint the problem as one or two things. Awkwardly like this author I do recall pinpointing my talking as my issue. The talking led me into places I couldn’t get out of and struggled to understand even more. When I was