Aldous Huxley in Brave New World

“But I like the inconveniences.”

“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.”

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphillis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” There was a long silence.

“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. “You’re welcome,” he said.

Purgatory

I wake up in the morning dreamless, buried in your hair. Outside the window roars the ocean and a dozen hungry birds congregating underneath the feeders. And I know we hate it here, I know. But next to us is an empty sushi box, a few empty bottles of wine, and a highlighted book at my feet for exploring south america, which can only be identified as the artifacts of a well lived life. And we wake up holding each other saying ” I love you, I love you” in our very brief moments of consciousness, every morning. Well I just think we’re doing something right.

You’ll make the coffee and I’ll get some blueberries from the garden. You’ll put on Apples in Stereo or Tame Impala or  Jose Gonzalez or one of your other summer inflictions and I’ll read you the atrocities and the daily good, you’ll quote me Ginsberg and tell me about new album releases. We’ll clean up the sushi, soy sauce stains on the sheets, make the bed, spring the pillows with lavender and eucalyptus.  I”ll turn all those old wine bottles into candle holders and you’ll serenade me with your guitar. In a few more weeks we’ll get going, we can leave this tourist town behind. But for now I find it a bit beautiful.