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Do you believe that if every person had enough money, enough work, enough leisure, enough learning, that if they were not oppressed by those above them, or fearful of those below them, humankind would be perfected? Byron asked this in his negative drawl, sure of the response, and so I set out to disaffect him. I do! I said. I do not! said Byron. The human race seeks its own death. We hasten towards what we fear most.
God, almond milk. Why??? For fuck’s sake! My doctor tried to get me on it. Cholesterol. I said, mate, I’d rather have the heart attack.
I believe it is each man’s task to awaken his own soul. His soul is that part of him not subject to death and decay; that part of him made alive to truth and beauty.
ague.
INTELLIGENCE: intellect, mind, brain, brains, brainpower, powers of reasoning, judgement, reason, reasoning, understanding, comprehension, acumen, wit, sense, insight, perceptiveness, perception, perspicaciousness, perspicacity, penetration, discernment, sharpness, quickness of mind, quick-wittedness, smartness, canniness, astuteness, intuition, acuity, alertness, cleverness, brilliance, aptness, ability, giftedness, talent.
Don’t forget the story of Bluebeard. There is always one door that should not be opened.
Vampires are like coal-fired power stations. My version of eternal life uses clean energy.
Communism must have seemed like the best possible solution. It is the best possible solution, I said, but human beings can’t share. We can’t even share free bicycles.
Humans: so many good ideas. So many failed ideals.
If we cannot keep this love, there is a place in me that has been changed by this love. And I will honour it. Think of it as a private place of worship, if you like. And sometimes, boarding a plane, or waking up, or walking down the street, or taking a shower (he pauses at the memory), I will recall that place and never regret the time I spent there.
That is what a madman is: a king without a crown.
We seek to care and to console. We do not seek to cure. Madness cannot be cured; it is a disease of the soul.
Only in the living of it does life seem ordinary. In the telling of it we find ourselves strangers among the strange.
What is sanity? he said. Can you tell me? Poverty, disease, global warming, terrorism, despotism, nuclear weapons, gross inequality, misogyny, hatred of the stranger.
physicist, a mystic,
Yet this night feels like forever – not that it will last forever but that it is forever. This is where we belong. Our capsule lost in space. The rest is a dream we’re dreaming. He talks in his sleep. This night-soaked bed. I lie back down quietly beside him and drift into his dark. Time will find us out but not yet. Enough to sleep in the temporary forever of now.
The teller or the tale?
I learned to drink wine in Italy, and I find it is excellent for the damp, for melancholy, and for writing.
what will become of the human dream? Will we see it end in pain and despair? Will we be free from the brutality of this life? By some artful intelligence find a better way?
It is almost eight years to the day since we ran away together. How vivid it is to me! Stars in the sky like uncounted chances. What could we not do? Who could we not be? His face like a mirror where I saw myself. When did the glass cloud over? What life is this that I have lived? Did I dream it?
Neither man seemed to consider that being refused an education, being legally the property of a male relative, whether father, husband or brother, having no rights to vote, and no money of her own once married, and being barred from every profession except governess or nurse, and refused every employment except mother, wife or skivvy, and wearing a costume that makes walking or riding impossible, might limit the active principle of a female.
Here I am. Anonymous, unnoticed, walking through the streets, and I am present and invisible. The riot in my head is unseen. What I am thinking, what I am feeling, are private Bedlams of my own. I manage my own madness just as you do. And if my heart is broken it keeps beating. That is the strangeness of life.
