Tuesday, May 12, 2009

It's Hard To Be Lean Without Also Being A Little Mean




Fig. 1. Alberto Giacometti - Le Chat, 1951


'Things would have been fine if my body and I had got on well together. But the fact is that we were an odd couple. When the child is unhappy, he doesn't asks himself questions. If he suffers bodily as a result of needs and sickness, his unjustifiable state justifies his existence. His right to live is based on hunger, on the constant danger of death. As for me, I was neither rich enough to think I was predestined nor poor enough to feel my desires as demands … Breathing, digesting, defecating unconcernedly, I lived because I had begun to live. I was unaware of the violence and savage demands of that gorged companion, my body, which made itself known by a series of mild disturbances, much in demand among grown-ups ...'

Jean-Paul Sartre