how to act Sometimes I think it would be easier if I didn't know people. My problem is, I can never manage to accommodate myself to the way the world works, the priorities that people have. I feel like a stranger here. Humans have the spirits of angels housed in the bodies of beasts: it's like some kind of perverse joke. We do neither the one nor the other particularly well. We lack the sureness of self that animals have thanks to their instincts: a wolf knows he is a wolf, and when he sees a lamb he doesn't hesitate to leap, though a human would be consumed by guilt. On the other hand, it's hard to follow through on our most noble imaginings when our bodies keep dragging us back to the mundane: eating simply because we are hungry, shitting once we are full, surrounded by noise and light and motion, living in a horrendous sewer we created for ourselves in our least conscious moments. The time for adventures is finished. Now it's time to get to work, but on what? It's hard to find a sense of purpose in a world where, on the one hand, things are so badly wrong that everyone knows the mess is impossible to disentangle; while on the other, things are slowly evolving for the better more or less of their own accord, so it's best to just "let it be." It's hard to see what one person can do in this situation: how to act in a way that will bring results. Those of us who have interests in common, who find a spontaneous and reassuring sympathy whenever we meet, are spread all over the globe. In any one place, our density is distressingly thin. We have the instinct to herd together, not for our protection exactly, but to give ourselves some weight, the courage necessary to act. Yet a deeper instinct seems to prevent this from taking hold. After all, what distinguishes us in our minds from "the others" is our independence, our uniqueness, our lack of faith in our ability to fit in anywhere. Besides, isn't it egoism to seek out only those who resemble us most? Don't we have something more important to do in the world than simply clump ourselves together? However much we may need each other, the rest of the world needs us more. We seem to be caught in a cycle of going up the mountain and coming down again, never able to make up our minds.
	location: Paris date: August 1992 average rating: [not rated] your rating (0-10):