Independence,

To be fixated with the surface of things denies everything else of interest - compassion, intelligence, wit, wisdom, clarity, bravery, courage, impulsiveness, vitality, conviction, spiritedness. Who in their right mind would reduce all of this to the surface only? As you look beyond the surface, you enter a new world with a new language, you isolate yourself from the non-speakers, non-seers. All around us the ordinary work is a shadow, a thin film. I have pushed through I have seen through to the other side. Underneath the myth of the ordinary world, everything streams, everything blazes... Have you ever noticed the most interesting, the most dangerous, the most flagrant people are always in the smoking section? The exotic, the strange, affecting, clever, glorious, exotic, strange affecting variety of us as brothers, visionaries, rogues, lovers, brothers, writers, mistresses, healers, addicts, conspirators, drunks. Look around. The glory of us because we are capable of independent thought. The glory of us as differentiated, once only, fingerprint-print originals. Look around you: ideas, loves, lusts, quirks, ill-founded beliefs, all too personal truths. Independence.