The Book of Illusions

All I know is that I wasn't afraid. . . . I understood that the bullets in that gun contained a thought that had never occured to me before. The world was full of holes, tiny aperatures of meaninglessness, microscopic rifts that the mind could walk through, and once you were on the other side of ones of those holes, you were free of yourself, free of your life, free of your death, free of everything that belonged to you. I had chanced upon one of them in my living room that night. It appeared in the form of a gun, and now that I was inside that gun, I didn't care whether I got out or not. I was perfectly calm and perfectly insane, perfectly prepared to accept was te moment had offered. Indifference of that magnitude is rare, and because it can be achieved only by someone ready to let go of who he is, it demands respect. It inspires awe to those who gaze upon it.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~I kept my eyes open, I tried to absorb everything around me, but no doubt there was much that I missed as well. Like it or not, i can only write about what I saw and heard--not about what I didn't. This is not an admission of failure so much as a declaration of methodology, a statement of principles. If I never saw the moon, then the moon was never there.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~I liked sitting down at the long wooden table next to Alma and feeling her touch my arm in the same spot where Hector had touched me only a moment before. Two different gestures, two different memories--one on top of the other. My skin had become a palimpsest of fleeting sensations, and each layer bore the imprint of who I was.

Paul Auster, The Book of Illusions