It continued: darkness, then light; light, then darkness. I finished the wine and went out for more. I came back, undressed, got back in bed. The arrival and departure of the faces continued; I felt I was having a vision. I was being visited by hundreds of devils that the Devil Himself couldn't tolerate.
I drank more wine.

“Stop! Here lies the empire of death.”
Paris Catacombs.

Nighttime in Argentina

I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.

— Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

Adolf Kaufmann - Mediterranean Landscape with Ancient Temple.

French Foreign Legion sniper during Operation Zaire 1978

A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life.
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Other Stories

Le petit soldat, 1963.

Aaron Duval

White guard soldiers at Joensuu People’s House during the Finnish Civil War, spring 1918.

The longer you look at the monkey, the sooner you realize that you are the monkey.