“Do you mind a further inquiry, Mr. Henderson? What kind of traveler are you?
“Oh … that depends. I don’t know yet. It remains to be seen. You know,” I said, “you have to be very rich to take a trip like this.” I might have added, as it entered my mind to do, that some people found satisfaction in being (Walt Whitman: “Enough to merely be! Enough to breathe! Joy! Joy! All over joy!”). Being. Others were taken up with becoming. Being people have all the breaks. Becoming people are very unlucky, always in a tizzy. The Becoming people are always having to make explanations or offer justifications to the Being people. While the Being people provoke these explanations. I sincerely feel that this is something everyone should understand about me. […] And if I had been capable of the alert consciousness which it required I would have confessed that Becoming was beginning to come out of my ears. Enough! Enough! Time to have Become! Time to Be! Burst the spirit’s sleep. Wake up, America! Stump the experts. Instead I told this savage king, “I seem to be kind of a tourist.”
-from Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow
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CC image courtesy of AndreasS on Flickr.