apologees

found an old journal. here is something i copied from it from some book:

yet i obscurely missed something druing all those years. when one has once had the good luck to love intensely, life is spent in trying to recapture that ardor and that illumination. forsaking beauty and the sunsual happiness attatched to it, exclusively serving misfortune, calls for a nobility i lack. but, afterall, nothing is true that forces one to exclude. isolated beauty ends up simpering. solitary justice ends up oppressing. whoever aims to serve one exclusive of the other serves no one, not even himself, and eventually serves injustice twice. a day comes, when thanks to rigidity, nothing causes wonder anymore, everything is known, and life is spent in begginning over again. these are the days of exile, of dessicated life, of dead souls. to come alive again, one needs a special grace, self-forgetfulness, or a homeland. certain mornings, on turning a corner, a delightful dew falls on the heart and then evaporates. but its coolness remains, and this is what the heart requires always.

i have to set out again.

--albert camus. "return to tipasa"