The Shattered Conscience

Come Desire of Nations, come! Fix in us Thy humble home: Rise, the woman's conquering seed, Bruise in us the serpent's head. Adam's likeness now efface, Stamp Thine image in its place: Second Adam from above, Reinstate us in Thy love. Hark! The herald angels sing, "Glory to the newborn King!"

Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt likeness and unlikeness, that piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or a look, his real sympathy. I am equally balked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.

I love it when young men eroticize themselves, and like Narcissus, are entrapped by their own reflection. Like: "Oh my God. I look so sexy right now."

Knock and the door shall be open unto you. ...and if it doesn't, kick down the fucking door.

In this Sargasso Sea of fantasy and fraud, how can I or anyone else hope to swim unencumbered? How can I learn to see with, and not just through, the eye? How can I take off my own motley, wash away the makeup, raise the iron shutter, put out the studio lights, silence the sound effects, and put the cameras to sleep? Can I ever watch the sun rise on Sunset Boulevard, and the sun set over Forest Lawn?