In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep you never were. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I am or not. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.
- William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
- William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Forwarded from alcoholic.exe
Depressed – he had reasons for it – he had been drinking steadily the night before. He had drifted from bar to bar, then seen no need to stop once he returned to his room. He vaguely remembered the sensation of booze sliding down his throat, the sought-after numbness it radiated. But how had that moment led to this one? Straining once more, he got hold of another image. The last thing he had done was to make his way into the bathroom and settle onto the toilet seat, bottle in hand. Time for one more swig before bed.
The average person is not especially curious about the world. He is alive, and being somehow obliged to deal with this condition, feels the less effort it requires, the better. Whereas learning about the world is labor, and a great all-consuming one at that. Most people develop quite antithetical talents, in fact - to look without seeing, to listen without hearing, mainly to preserve onself within oneself.
- Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus
- Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus
“If one has gone without music for a long time it afterwards enters the blood all too quickly like a heavy southern vine, and leaves behind a soul narcotically dulled, half-awake and longing for sleep.”
—Human, All Too Human, “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” §154 (excerpt).
—Human, All Too Human, “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” §154 (excerpt).