July 21, 1969

..[t]he fatal disorder of worldliness which rejects worldly happiness.

Innumerable millions of passengers had polished the wood of the turnstile with their hips. From this arose a feeling of communion-brotherhood in one of its cheapest forms.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars-on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places

Once again, once again walking yet always on the spot, another country, other towns, the same country...Gagarin did not "find God in Heaven"...the new condition of existence in the weightlessness of a space 'without place' is still experienced by the first man sent there as a here, as the same, without genuine otherness.

Is there a door he hasn't noticed? Is there a bare wall where two windows open?

---Bellow, Frost, Blanchot (via Levinas)

July 21, 1969: something in the air

And now: Z