On The Ovarian Trolley, Occupy the Uterus

"But I had no choice about the mother who was to deliver me. Perhaps I was lucky not to have been born an idiot, considering all the circumstances. One thing seems clear, however, and this is a hangover from the 25, that I was born with a crucifixion complex. That is, to be more precise, I was born a fanatic. Fanatic! I remember that word being hurled at me from early childhood on. By my parents especially. What is a fanatic? One who believes so passionately and acts desperately upon what he believes. I was always believing in something and so getting into trouble. The more my hands were slapped the more firmly I believed. I believed, and the rest of the world did not!If it were only a question of enduring punishment one could go on believing till the end; but the way of the world is more insidious than that. Instead of being punished you are undermined, hollowed out, the ground taken from under your feet...It's a negativism that causes you to overreach yourself. You are perpetually spending your energy in the act of balancing yourself. You are seized with a soft of spiritual vertigo, you totter on the brink, your hair stands on end, you can't believe that beneath your feet lies an immeasurable abyss. It comes about through excess of enthusiasm, through passionate desire to embrace people, to show them your love The more you reach out toward the world the more the world retreats. Nobody wants real love, real hatred. Nobody wants you to put your hand in his sacred entrails, that's only for the priest in the hour of sacrifice. While you live, while the blood's still warm, you are to pretend that there is no such thing as blood and no such thing as a skeleton beneath the covering flesh. Keep off the grass! That's the motto by which people live by."

Tropics of Capricorn, Henry Miller