Off-balance

To complete the triptych. This man was carrying fish in the box on his handlebars. They were fresh as the day, I suppose, but the box itself was pungent.

The examiner showed a row of unusually mutilated teeth. Was he laughing? …What was the purpose of my trip, and why was I travelling like this?

Again that question! Again! It was like the question asked by Tennyson about the flower in the crannied wall. That is, to answer it might involve the history of the universe… What was I going to tell this fellow? That existence had become odious to me? It was just not the kind of reply to offer under these circumstances. Could I say that the world, the world as a whole, the entire world, had set itself against life and was opposed to it – just down on life, that’s all – but that I was alive nevertheless and somehow found it impossible to go along with it? …No, I couldn’t say that either.

Nor: ‘You see, Mr Examiner, everything has become so tremendous and involved, why, we’re nothing but instruments of this world’s processes.’ Nor: ‘I am this kind of guy, rest is painful to me, and I have to have motion.’ Nor: ‘I’m trying to learn something, before it all gets away from me.’ As you can see for yourselves, these are all impossible answers.

Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King