Anyway, how could he describe the process? Somehow it involved emptiness – no other word would do. The day had to be empty. For that matter, so did he. Walking, he felt himself emptying out, as if he had become transparent or was no longer there, no longer belonged to the world of others, might as well not exist. Afterward he could never reproduce his thoughts in tangible form, though 'thought' was too big a word to describe his indistinct, vague reveries, the jumbled images and snatches of sentences that passed through his head.

from Cees Nooteboom's All Souls Day