William S. Burroughs: The Beginning Is Also The End
25. February 2008 17:43
"I am not an addict. I am the addict. The addict I invented to keep this show on the junk road. I am all the addicts and all the junk in the world. I am junk and I am hooked forever. Now I am using junk as a basic illustration. Extend it. I am reality and I am hooked, on, reality. Give me an old wall and a garbage can and I can by God sit there forever.
Because I am the wall and I am the garbage can. I need some one to sit there and look at the wall and the garbage can. That is, I need a human host. I can't look at anything. I am blind. I can't sit anywhere. I have nothing to sit on. And let me take this opportunity of replying to my creeping opponents. It is not true that I hate the human species. I just don't like human beings. I don't like animals. What I feel is not hate. In your verbal garbage the closest word is distaste. Still I must live in and on human bodies. An intolerable situation you will agree. To make that situation clearer suppose you were stranded on a planet populated by insects. You are blind. You are a drug addict. But you find a way to make the insects bring you junk. Even after thousands of years living there you still feel that basic structural distaste for your insect servants. You feel it every time they touch you. Well that is exactly the way I feel about my human servants. Consequently since my arrival some five hundred thousand years ago I have had one thought in mind. What you call the history of mankind is the history of my escape plan. I don't want 'love.' I don't want forgiveness. All I want is out of here."
William S. Burroughs, Transatlantic Review, 1963
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