"Today is my thirtieth birthday and I sit on the ocean wave in the schoolyard and wait for Kate and think of nothing. Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for ever species of sh*t that flies—my only talent—smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great sh*thouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall—on this my thirtieth birthday."
Walker Percy
The Moviegoer
Ever since I read this several years ago, it seemed like it was destined to commemorate in some form my own thirtieth birthday. It doesn't necessarily represent my own subjective state of mind, but I present it nonetheless. Thanks for the birthday wishes from those who sent them along.
totus + amdg + tuus
No comments:
Post a Comment