drop

I was just standing on the back balcony of the student union, it’s a cool building with huge stone columns, I was standing on the edge of the balcony, which has always been something I love to do, but thought it was odd, like standing on the edge of cliffs, or roofs, or just walking out to the end of a fallen log. It’s the edge, something about standing at the end, or the edge is so calming for me. I was stressing about my paper, but go stand on the edge of a cliff (balcony) for a few minuets, and it frees my mind to think, and work. I read an article in backpacker magazine about this guy who whenever he would hike, he would love to walk to the edge of cliffs, overhangs, whatever, it was not that he had a desire to jump off, it was just about the edge. I connected with him, it was cool.

Today, as I stood on the edge, I looked up, and saw that the rain was dripping off the edge of the roof, and falling just pass me to the ground 30’ below, every once in a while, the wind would pick up the rain and move it over so that it fell on me. I felt like I was on a super highway, like with 10 lanes of traffic, and the cars were zooming at me, sometimes they would scream by diverting from my face at the last second, others would smash straight into my eye, or cheek, or forehead. Not that I have any great desire to find out what would happen if I stood in the middle of I-5 for a while, but this was a very cool feeling.

M@

"But I like the inconveniences."

"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want
freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be
unhappy."

"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have
syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be
lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow;
the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of
every kind." There was a long silence.

"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.

--from Brave New World