It may turn out that the throbbing was no more than the sound of my own blood in my ears. What I hope is that even if it does I shall not be afraid, because why should that blood have throbbed so steadily, for so long, in spite of so many reasons why I need not have lived, if it were not that I too have been, with the same intensity as any flower or matchbox or dog or other human being: all part of something which can only be expressed in the words ‘I am that which I am’, and which needs no further proof or justification?
