When Even Despair Ceases To

In The Dream Of Approaching Forty I Saw Myself As About To Die And Realized That I Was No Longer Myself, But A Creature Inhabited Entirely By Parasites, As A Caterpillar Is Occupied By The Grubs Of The Ichneumon Fly. Gin, Whisky, Sloth, Fear, Guilt, Tobacco, Had Made Themselves My Inquilines; Alcohol Sloshed About Within, While Tendrils Of Melon And Vine Grew Out Of Ears And Nostrils; My Mind Was A Worn Gramophone Record, My True Self Was Such A Ruin As To Seem Non-existent, And All This Had Happened In The Last Three Years.

If Montaigne Is A Man In The Prime Of Life Sitting In His Study On A Warm Morning And Putting Down The Sum Of His Experience In His Rich, Sinewy Prose, Then Pascal Is That Same Man Lying Awake In The Small Hours Of The Night When Death Seems Very Close And Every Thought Is Heightened By The Apprehension That It May Be His Last.

In The Sex-war, Thoughtlessness Is A Weapon Of The Male, Vindictiveness Of The Female. Both Are Reciprocally Generated, But A Woman's Desire For Revenge Outlasts All Other Emotion. Yet When Every Unkind Word About Women Has Been Said, We Have Still To Admit, With Byron, That They Are Nicer Than Men. They Are More Devoted, More Unselfish And More Emotionally Sincere. When The Long Fuse Of Cruelty, Deceit And Revenge Is Set Alight, It Is Male Thoughtlessness Which Has Fired It.

Sheep With A Nasty Side.

We Create The World In Which We Live; If That World Becomes Unfit For Human Life, It Is Because We Tire Of Our Responsibility.