what's source material? armstrong's ass.. lol.
MUSTAFA KEMAL was twenty, wiry in build, with a tough constitution and unlimited vitality.
He had no experience of life. Salonika had been a mean little port; Lazaran a country village; Monastir a dull provincial town. He had none of his mother's deep beliefs or principles to keep him steady.
At once he plunged wildly into the unclean life of the great metropolis of Constantinople. Night after night he gambled and drank in the cafes and restaurants. With women he was not fastidious. A figure, a face in profile, a laugh, could set him on fire and reaching out to get the woman, whatever she was.
Sometimes it would be with the Greek and Armenian harlots in the bawdy-houses in the garbage-stinking streets by Galata Bridge, where came the pimps and the homosexualists to cater for all the vices; then for a week or two a Levantine lady in her house in Pangaldi; or some Turkish girl who came veiled and by back-ways in fear of the police to some maison de rendez-vous in Pera or Stambul.
He fell in love with none of them. He was never sentimental or romantic. Without a pang of conscience he passed rapidly from one to the next. He satisfied his appetite and was gone.
He was completely Oriental in his mentality: women had no place in his life except to satisfy his sex. He plunged deep down into the lecherous life of the city. Suddenly he reacted from all this rioting and concentrated on his work with the same energy.
'Evil is a point of view,' he whispered now. 'We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms.'
Reklam
If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.
Finally the confession
Slade’s hands hang at his sides, and something ripples
in his eyes. Something I can’t read. “What are you saying,
Auren?”
Everything.
I’m saying everything.
Because there’s no time. Because I’m supposed to
leave. Because he’s leaving too.
I take a deep, shaky breath. “All my life, I have been
coveted or bought or possessed because of the gold that
drips from my fingers and lusters my skin. I have been used
and kept, and I learned to accept that life. I learned to
accept that the best I deserved was Midas and that I
shouldn’t ever hope for more because I knew just how
much worse it could be.”
An angry look slashes across the shadows of Slade’s
face, his mouth pressing together above his stubbled chin.
My wet lashes drag against my cheek with every blink.
“But then you came along. And never, not once, has anyone
looked at me the way you do.”
He goes tense, breath bated to hear what I have to say.
There’s a long pause held between us, like hands cupping
water, desperate not to let a single drop leak out. “And
what way is that?”
“Like I’m a person instead of a trophy. Like you don’t
just look at me and see gold,” I answer honestly. “That’s
never happened before,” I admit with a sad smile. “You
challenged me to be more than what I’ve been made into.
You showed me how to see the world without my
blindfold.”
He shifts on his feet, allowing a slash of light shining
Fame-(II)
(...)
And I’m happy. I’m happy that Conscience, the pimp
of my sleepy reflections and projects,
did not get at the critical secret. Today
I am really remarkably happy.
That main secret tra-tá-ta tra-tá-ta tra-tá—
and I must not be overexplicit;
this is why I find laughable the empty dream
about readers, and body, and glory.
Without body I’ve spread, without echo I thrive,
and with me all along is my secret.
Abook’s death can’t affect me since even the break
between me and my land is a trifle.
I admit that the night has been ciphered right well
but in place of the stars [ put letters,
and I’ve read in myself how the self to transcend—
and I must not be overexplicit.
Trusting not the enticements of the thoroughfare
or such dreams as the ages have hallowed,
I prefer to stay godless, with fetterless soul
in a world that is swarming with godheads.
But one day while disrupting the strata of sense
Spurzheim made a synthesis of all these analyses in one of the last texts devoted to them. Madness, “more frequent in England than anywhere else,” is merely the penalty of the liberty that reigns there, and of the wealth universally enjoyed. Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism. “Religious sentiments … exist without restriction; every individual is entitled to preach to anyone who will listen to him,” and by listening to such different opinions, “minds are disturbed in the search for truth.”
Reklam
Reklam