They took me for a scarecrow.I have always liked Ionesco. He makes Rhinoceroses charge through city streets. He makes my heart falter and then suddenly realize that it hasn't been beating for quite some time, and as a final fulfilling blessing, he tells me that it's okay if my heart doesn't beat.
That's life, I heard someone behind me saying, you die.
Tortures and disturbs. There is one solitude which is both boring and unbearable, and that is the one where you compare yourself to others, call on them, have need of them, a solitude in which you flee from them because you believe in their existence. Since you're afraid of others, you rush forward as though to disarm them.
It doesn't keep us from sleeping, the wife of the retired man put it.
Or she might think it was the lack of money, the dull anonymous work routine that had nipped our life in the bud; but love can move mountains, love can burst all bonds, even steel; nothing can stand in its way, as we all know. It's our own mediocrity that makes us let go of love, makes us renounce it. True Love doesn't know the meaning of renunciation, is not even aware of that problem, never resigns itself; resignation is for beaten people, as beaten paths are for beaten men.
Was it my fault? Was it only my fault? I hadn't known how to go about it. There could have been happy times, times when the gloom was pierced by a ray of joy. Is that true? Could there have been light? Could there have been love? There could have been, there could have been. Think of all the missed opportunities! The women who had left me because I was incapable of love. My final chance had been with Yvonne. Or was it Marie? But there was love in me. In the vaults and prisons, in the dungeons of my soul. Locked up. The doors were locked and I didn't have the key. Alas, yes: all that was buried very deeply and distant.
No, she wasn't in the habit of looking up over the rooftops. She hadn't noticed a thing. In the first place, she spent her nights sleeping. During the day she was too busy. She had work to do. She would look up at the sky on Sunday.
Why is it that we always laugh too late? Nothing is really serious, since everything passes.
He hung up. I thought that it was strange for him to assume that it was abnormal for anyone to be forever asking questions about the nature of the universe, about what the human condition really was, my condition, what I was doing here, if there was really something to do. It seemed to me on the contrary that it was abnormal for people not to think about it, for them to allow themselves to live, as it were, unconsciously.
The wallpaper was very well done, and very pretty: roses against a white background. I'm very fond of flowers. Unless it was the paperhanger who liked them.
Maybe that's what she was waiting for...
Be careful of this book. Be sure you're feet are firmly stuck the in mud. Stick them deep enough the mud will pull your shoes off if you try to get out. Better to lose your shoes than your life. No man can idly ask the question: "What is the human condition?" And yet all men are asking this idle question. We are running our mouths and have demeaned our hearts because of this. You have to ask the question if you are going to ask it. Think about this.
What is the human condition? What are we doing here? What is the point? You ask this question to get an answer, not to pass the time. I have been myself and seen a thousand other people asking this question like they ask for the time of day or about the weather. I pray that God will have mercy on us for this.
This question, when asked, will drive you out of your mind. And I am beginning to suspect that insanity is necessary for life. It is now my belief that good life is won through insanity.
Therefore, my eyes don't fall and I punch walls. First there was one and then one made two and the two made three and the three made the myriad beauties...what's the waiting for?
I choose insanity.
Take me as a scarecrow.
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