TALES OF AN ORANGEPEELER an archive of pleasures, wounds, sublimations & other curiosities :: profile 01.17.14 Happiness stupefies. It dulls the desire for freedom, for liberation from anxieties and sorrows that, with happiness, become suppressed, pushed into some fathomless recess of the unconscious and not seen again until one is unhappy again, and restless for pen and paper. I have to wait until 5 am, until everyone is asleep and traffic is rare on the main road, to write. It is in solitude, in the state that is outside happiness (but not necessarily opposed to it), where I face the suppressed inhabitants of mind and past, so that I'm compelled to articulate memory and its meanings. To do so is to hinder the stupefying effect of not only happiness, but also life itself. Writing, art, the exercise of wit and intellect - these are the vital tools for salvaging the otherwise senseless flow of the everyday. <<