I sometimes have these days when I cannot make myself lift a finger, because I imagine the rest of my life as merely an expertise and the slow familiarization of myself with concepts. But whatever the validity of this realization is, on some level, I couldn't imagine dragging myself out of bed every day if there weren't some other reason for working.
This other reason is the relationship to ... objects and people. People and objects are the same thing, but this refusal to draw a distinction between life and non-life is not to say that people are predictable or anything, but to say that all things speak to us, and all things ask some responsibility out of us. The aescetic, or the one who avoids people, is not cold-hearted, but rather feels just as much responsibility as the next person. Perhaps asceticism is not at all the dodging of responsibility, but a rather a desire for focus, I sometimes feel like a live in a world of like a thousand voices. Everything begs responsibility from me, everything and everyone. I'm obviously not talking about pity, or about being able to help things, but everything seems to speak of itself -- not only people and art, but the objects all around us -- the table, the book, the house, the silverware, etc., everything. One needs some kind of focus in order to get up and go to work, and that focus requires one to be "alone" (to in fact, be with very few things) so that one can form a unique or an intimate relationship to some object or some spirit.
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