How can I concentrate on anything when love so burns through my veins? I am taken with the object of my desires and can think only of his embraces, only of his company, so that everything I enjoyed before seems odious to me and everything that interrupts my mind from the perception of my life, every barrier and all scorn, become detestable lashes and whips against my soul. My soul! Moved by a great passion, I believe in everything that Passion spoke about in books, and I can only rail against the Academics who argue that the soul cannot exist, that there is some order and rhythm to be perceived behind human affairs -- how can there be a great thing Known when I am embraced by madness? How can you not desire to plunge into these turbid waters and drown; how can you sit and read and think? Think! Thinking is the most detestable practice, to close oneself up in one's meditations, to regard the world with a solemn air, and then to pronounce with chapped lips, "I understand what I do not understand." Life revolts against you, you marble-eyed statues, you stone-cold guardians of knowledge. Life and all that serves it revolts against you and continually denounces you.

We have so focused on words that we begin to believe the words are the things themselves. Or at least that words are things at all -- that somehow they can be understood, even if they have no existence outside of the maze of our souls. But what of words as expression, as pointers, to the inner movements of feeling in concert with being, all being, Great Being? The whole of the world could be appropriated to express a sentiment, and yet the whole world, is it not at the same time an expression of that sentiment? When I say that I burn with love, is there no resemblance between my burning and the raging of a great fire? Will you hurl against me proofs, logical conundrums, or will you sidle up to me and look into my eyes, tell me, "I do not understand, please explain what you mean when you say..." No! I will have none of it! I push you away, I can consume you, the sword against Socrates -- against his puzzlement there is still blood.

Everything is blooming and then shadows fall across the sky. Petals fall and flowers fade while green life bursts. My impatience conceives my happiness, a great happiness in having loved, and yet a love eternally absent, and strengthened by that distance. This is the plight of the romantics: to be consumed in strong emotions that can never be consummated, and to love that consumption while dying from it. Is there another way of existence, will you suggest another habitation for my soul? My soul hates you for your arrogance, that you think you can understand me, that you would dare approach me and tell me I am consumed in folly. Is it folly to love? Is it folly to desire the touch of another at every moment? Is it folly to exist on every plane of being? Then life is folly -- either the folly of tragedy or comedy. Forget your distinctions, your gilded words, your crowned emoluments from much memorization and debate. Feel, feel, feel and be consumed!