All at first was the fremitus of things, the jigger of gnats, drum of the blood, fidget of leaves, shiver of light, boom of the wind.  The tremor of my cry may have had something to do with choosing this threshold.  There are other sills, empty places with intolerable glare, presences, noon quiet, lonely desperate desert wastes.  I have died again in them.  Those who go to the inhuman to place their hopes upon its alien rhythms, its bitter familiarity with nothing, its constant retreat from all that we can love, are hostages to vastation.


-Guy Davenport, from C. Musonius Rufus