A passage in the beginning of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad struck my interest. In his description of the white men living in a far-east sea port:
There were two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of civilisation, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement.
...[The others] - in their actions, in their looks, in their persons - could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence.
This is a nice, poetic caricature of my own extreme states of mind. The words "to lounge safely through existence" bump rudely against an existential angst I frequently feel.
There were two kinds. Some, very few and seen there but seldom, led mysterious lives, had preserved an undefaced energy with the temper of buccaneers and the eyes of dreamers. They appeared to live in a crazy maze of plans, hopes, dangers, enterprises, ahead of civilisation, in the dark places of the sea; and their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement.
...[The others] - in their actions, in their looks, in their persons - could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence.
This is a nice, poetic caricature of my own extreme states of mind. The words "to lounge safely through existence" bump rudely against an existential angst I frequently feel.
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