“But this, of course, is only one the many contradictions in which we are steeped. From birth to death, the spectacle of our lives is far from tranquilizing. We are born naked, defenseless, insignificant. Despire arrogant pronouncements, despite the high-sounding rhetoric, there is always something pathetic, even contemptible, in our condition. The first part of our lives passes amidst wails and hunger pains, such as are soothed with a little milk. Then we vacillate and totter, and walk on all fours. And all the time, throughout our lives, we remain frail of body, restless of soul, subject to infinite passions, besieged by a multitude of ills, wavering between extremes of joy and sadness. In the bloom of life we are enslaved by our own appetites. At our strongest, the body has the power to oppress us with hunger, to subdue us with sleepiness, burn us with thirst, exhaust us in fasting. But we live on, at once avid and fearful, bored with our possessions but regretful of our losses; conceited with our so-called triumphs in the midst of our miseries. We live on, not knowing what will happen to us, as the hours tick away, each one wounding us, the last one killing us. “Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat” was the inscription that Migel de Unamuno could read on the dial of the clock tower in the central plaza of a Basque little town.”
—
There is a World Elsewhere, 1998, F. Gonzalez-Crussi
Notes
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