Constantly walking on sand hardens the body and makes the mind supple. Impatience and irritation become pointless: you drive them away with a laugh, or avert your gaze from others. You need only walk 10 paces to be alone in the protective emptiness. Faced with this “purity of rarefaction” that bewitched Lawrence of Arabia, superfluous needs dissolve, and the self loses its substance. No obligations remain to shackle it, no more redundant desires to deceive it – except for the irresistible urge to go further, deeper into oneself. By law, a vacuum must be fined.
Jean-François Chaix, An Intimate Vastness
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