Augustine of the suburbs

The old problems, from time out of mind; they don't change much, whether it's Carthage or Westchester or Upper East Side. The mystification, the utter senselessness of it all, wrapped up in or around by moments of precise comprehension. The tension, the conflictual drives that tear at a human being, and that set one person against another. The human condition: mystifying to the core, every detail shrouded in dumbfoundedness...a fork in the flow of events, that means life could go one way or, drastically, quite another. Nothing is given or known with assuredness.  This could be late antiquity; this could be 1950's Americana.

 Life isn't made any simpler by a life of abundance. Religion only adds to the complexities of the times. There must be a way out, or a way into a richer, more meaningful life. The predicament, the fundamentals of humanity is that men and women are always at a loss or always feel that there must be a truer life somewhere else, even if it's just around the corner; the promise of some imagined wholeness dimly recalled; there must be some pure glass in which we could see our faces, our lives, other people untainted by the darkness of our fears...

'When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand. It is a headache, a slight case of indigestion, an infected finger...'

'In the morning the air is cold and dark and as clear as glass.'

'The specious cheerfulness of the lost, their fetid compassion, their devotion to deep chords of laughter, to kindly faces in lighted rooms...'

'..and you recognize at once in the grayness of her face and the elegance of her voice that she has come to you from the abyss.'

'It is not that the light goes; a dimness falls from the sky over everything, obscuring the light.  The cold air makes the dog seem to bark into a barrel. Bright stars, house lights, rubbish fires.'

And here's a line which struck me as very ancient, very old-world in its turn of phrase and underlying sentiment...

'But I also see that we perform our passions in the large scene of what we have done and left undone in the past and that now and then the curve of feeling-hostility- seems to intersect the structure of my disposition...Reason cannot enjoin the carcass to be cheerful and lusty-and when my powers of desire are maimed, so are my powers of wisdom-but I can persist at least in my hopefulness-in my knowledge tat simple cure...will set the mind free.'