cpb:
via www.serre-dome.com
Can it be that I, the elderly predecessor of those scourers of the jungle, am the only one to have brought back nothing but a handful of ashes? Is mine the only voice to bear witness to the impossibility of escapism? Like the Indian in the myth, I went as far as the earth allows one to go, and when I arrived at the world’s end, I questioned the people, the creatures and things I found there and met with the same disappointment: ‘He stood still, weeping bitterly, praying and moaning. And yet no mysterious sound reached his ears, nor was he put to sleep in order to be transported, as he slept, to the temple of the magic animals. For him there could no longer be the slightest doubt : no power, from anyone, had been granted him’.
from Tristes Tropiques by Claude Levi Strauss