Everything Our Civilization Has Produced

It Is Thanks To My Evening Reading Alone That I Am Still More Or Less Sane.

Human Civilization Has Been No More Than A Strange Luminescence Growing More Intense By The Hour, Of Which No One Can Say When It Will Begin To Wane And When It Will Fade Away.

No Matter Whether One Is Flying Over Newfoundland Or The Sea Of Lights That Stretches From Boston To Philadelphia After Nightfall, Over The Arabian Deserts Which Gleam Like Mother-of-pearl, Over The Ruhr Or The City Of Frankfurt, It Is As Though There Were No People, Only The Things They Have Made And In Which They Are Hiding.

The More Images I Gathered From The Past, I Said, The More Unlikely It Seemed To Me That The Past Had Actually Happened In This Or That Way, For Nothing About It Could Be Called Normal: Most Of It Was Absurd, And If Not Absurd, Then Appalling.

Otherwise, All I Remember Of The Denizens Of The Nocturama Is That Several Of Them Had Strikingly Large Eyes, And The Fixed Inquiring Gaze Found In Certain Painters And Philosophers Who Seek To Penetrate The Darkness Which Surrounds Us Purely By Means Of Looking And Thinking.