Explore "Plexus" by Henry Miller on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In a Buddhist magazine not long ago I read something like this: "If we could only get what we want when we think we need it life would present no problem, no mystery, and no meaning. " I was a trifle indisposed the morning I read this. I had decided to spend the day in bed. Reading these words, however, I began to howl with laughter. In less than no time I was up and out of bed, chirping away as merrily as usual.
If I had come across this piece of wisdom in the period I am writing of I doubt if it would have had any effect upon me. It was just impossible for me to take a detached view of things. The day was full of problems, full of complications. There was mystery in everything, irritating mystery. The mystery surrounding the universe-that was sheer intellectual luxury. The whole meaning of life was wrapped up in the solution of how to keep afloat. It sounds simple, but we knew how to complicate even such a simple problem.