The Intruders (also known as The Flower Garden) by Jessie A. Edwards (British, active 1864–1879), pencil, watercolour, and bodycolour with gum arabic on paper, 14 x 11 in (35.6 x 28 cm), Private Collection

all jokes aside i think my absolute favourite thing about lawrence’s writing is the prevailing feeling that he was One Of Us and how everything he writes or talks about is inevitably seen through that specific pov. i absolutely can’t get over the image of the airmen dancing together almost solemnly & very gently in the canteen and that in relation to how lawrence writes to em forster in the letter used as an intro in this edition that “for service fellows there are no men on earth except other service fellows”

Who are you? How do you characterise yourself? How do you find yourself different from others? No! That feature in you shouldn't be the result of that external storm, it's shouldn't be that tide that turned your boat. I want to know about that boat and not it's direction. People describe you in different ways. They sometimes characterize you as a man of ethics or morality, they even delineate you as socially abhorrent. They can call you a person of love and honesty while reprimanding your diligence towards your work and profession. Yes, this world characterizes you in a number of ways and number of parameters. All designed and designated by them. Often in our search to our that 'I' we end up being a slave to 'them'. 'Them' here means the people who characterize you and either praise you or penalize you for whatever feature you possess. No wonder these features of yours aren't the ones you were born with. We are never born with anything. Just chop off all your anger, all your happiness, all your desires and all your experiences. Just try to forget what happened so far in your life. Yes, you will end up with a void! A large void is totally empty of emotions. And yes these emotions are what characterizes us and what makes us characterize others. Just imagine once everything in the universe is gone, we will be left with nothing but a vast space of nothingness, I believe if nothingness too is an emotion then it will vanish too if we start chopping off everything. So reaching your true self means going to that path that takes you to nothingness. And yes remember the way they characterize you can be changed, so stop being a slave to 'them'! Be yourself reach that level of 'I', wherein you can start a new journey of evolution. Remember: you are a universe in yourself.

charles bukowski