Quiet Work of Things

“… my father was at the editorial office or at the meeting, – and in the twilight numbness of his office, my young feelings were exposed-I do not know how to put it-to the teleological, or “targeted” impact, as if the familiar objects gathered consciously and farsightedly tried to create this certain image that I now have in my brain; this quiet work of things over me I often felt in moments of empty, vague leisure. The clock on the table looked at me with all its phosphoric eyes. Here and there, a glare on the bronze, a wall-eye in the ebony, a glitter on the glass of photographs, a gloss on the canvas of pictures, reflected in the darkness an occasional ray that penetrated from the street where the moon globes of gas were already burning. Shadows, like the shadows of the blizzard itself, were walking on the ceiling. ”
V.Nabokov, Other banks.