The Humans

Walt Whitman was right about at least one thing. You will contradict yourself. You are large. You contain multitudes. 39. No one is ever completely

That was part of being human, I discovered. It was about knowing which lies to tell, and when to tell them. To love someone is to lie to them.

In your mind, change the name of every day to Saturday. And change the name of work to play.

was the eyes, on Earth, that mattered. You saw the person, and the life inside them, if you saw the eyes.

How happy is the little stone That rambles in the road alone, And doesn’t care about careers, And exigencies never fears; Whose coat of elemental brown A passing universe put on; And independent as the sun, Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute decree In casual simplicity.

Of being a mortal creature who was essentially alone but needed the myth of togetherness with others. Friends, children, lovers. It was an attractive myth. It was a myth you could easily inhabit.

That it will never come again, Is what makes life so sweet. – Emily Dickinson

(On Earth, incidentally, civilisation is the result of a group of humans coming together and suppressing their instincts.)

The most human of words, the implication being that healthy normal life is covering something – the violence that is there underneath, the violence I had seen in Gulliver the night before. To be healthy meant to be covered. Clothed. Literally and metaphorically.