life is elsewhere

After an exhausting day putting up with too many of these atrophied creatures who seem afraid of their own shadow, and culminating in a surreal train ride among zombified salarymen clinging to their briefcases as if to a crucifix, one badly needs to come to one's senses and feel alive and free and responsive.


These guys are dead, most definitely -- and somebody has forgotten to bury them.

*       *       *

We are forces on the move, we are free, because we shed the images of ourselves as we go, and do not whip around to gather them up. We are active because we release our fevers and our fervors into the things we pass. We are strong because we discharge our forces into things that roll and rise. We laugh because we release our light and our warmth gratuitously, without asking in return, feeling happiest, as the sun does when it pours the excesses of its gold upon the seas. We are free because we are not imprisoned in our form or in our forces.

--Alphonso Lingis, Wonders seen in Forsaken Places (Chester Perkowski, 2010), p. 132.