elemntl

I’m 87 years old…I only eat so I can smoke and stay alive.. The only fear I have is how long consciousness is gonna hang on after my body goes. I just hope there’s nothing. Like there was before I was born. I’m not really into religion, they’re all macrocosms of the ego. When man began to think he was a separate person with a separate soul, it created a violent situation.

The void, the concept of nothingness, is terrifying to most people on the planet. And I get anxiety attacks myself. I know the fear of that void. You have to learn to die before you die. You give up, surrender to the void, to nothingness.

Anybody else you’ve interviewed bring these things up? Hang on, I gotta take this call….. Hey, brother. That’s great, man. Yeah, I’m being interviewed… We’re talking about nothing. I’ve got him well-steeped in nothing right now. He’s stopped asking questions.

- HARRY DEAN STANTON

Walking down the street yesterday came across a homeless fellow sitting on a set of apartment stairs. He had fallen asleep sitting upright and attempting to write out one of those handwritten cardboard signs that the homeless tend to hold up. He had fallen asleep mid word and the marker he was using had traced a jagged line down the piece of cardboard and gone off the edge. As I walked past he was just rousing from slumber and he looked confused at the line his marker had made down the surface, and he yelled out "Fuck!" At his feet were a bottle of some kind of alcohol, two other markers and other failed attempts at signs that had similar jagged lines on them. Seems the fellow couldn't make it through finishing a single sign without dozing off in the middle of writing.

After I walked past him, about ten steps away were three other markers lying on the sidewalk, broken in half, and a torn piece of cardboard with "Homeless vet pleas hel....[scrawl]" on it. A little further on was an empty bottle of the same alcohol and another marker.

The guys morning had been left strewn across this section of sidewalk as much as it had been on the cardboard signs he was trying to write.

#onwards #I❤NY