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July 1, 1968

The night, with its sleep and dreams, is dark; and there are the long, cold nights in winter, not to mention the longest night of all, death. Blindness, and its solitude, is continual darkness. The clouds darken the sky, keep away the sun, bring thunder and lightning. Dirt is dark and summon in hygienic middle-class minds all sorts of fears - germs and illness, contamination. Man's waste products are dard, and if they are not eventually expelled he grows sick. Sex is so often associated with the night; and we cover ourselves with clothes, keep our selves in the dark, for modesty's sake. Sadness and gloom are dark states of mind and in the shadows and the dark corners of the mind and of life itself lurk secrets, mysteries, confusion and danger - the unknowable or at least the unknown. The devil is dressed in black; and the evil of our sins is dark - a stain upon our good conscience. We are tempted by black serpents - though if we repent our state is wiped clean again.

Page 358 Children of crisis by Robert Coles Little, Brown and Company 1967

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Certain gestures in front of shop windows, gestures of futility, of hiding away, began to register on me with terrific force. I know precisely what it is to feel hunted, to stalk aimlessly up and down a street, staring idly at things, being shoved and pushed around and yet so blunted or stunned by an inner pain as to welcome it, as though each contact with an elbow or shoulder helped to restore you to physical awareness. I know exactly how one stands with hand in pocket and coat collar turned up - a sort of glorious feeling of disreputability.

Henry Miller in a letter to Anais Nin page 37