I feel, therefore I am

"I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism." - Milan Kundera, Immortality (205)

No wonder its afterglow survived defeat and death:

somnambulating waves caress the face of the moon

catastrophic appendages flounder in the distance

Tetris calculations obscure the vision of curators and ideologues

under the bridge, skirts and hairnets hide true natures to the detriment of the whole


basement ontologist

closed doors that creak

open legs that don't think

vanishing windows

an unearthed passion


producing varying effects
nipples that right off taxes

drunken candles and eaten airships

by the terror stricken vandals and their captors

and if then eyes could neither close nor cry

the end result would be pi times why and divided by the time you sang a Donny Hathaway song to a girl on a rainy summer night in Brooklyn