The secret affinity between gambling and the desert: the intensity of gambling reinforced by the presence of the desert all around... the town. The air-conditioned freshness of the gaming rooms, as against the radiant heat outside. The challenge of all the artificial lights to the violence of the sun's rays. Night of gambling sunlit on all sides; the glittering darkness of these rooms in the middle of the desert. Gambling itself is a desert form, inhuman, uncultured, initiatory, a challenge to the natural economy of value, a crazed activity on the fringes of exchange. But it too has a strict limit and stops abruptly; its boundaries are exact, its passion knows no confusion. Neither the desert nor gambling are open areas; their spaces are finite and concentric, increasing in intensity toward the interior, toward a central point, be it the spirit of gambling or the heart of the desert--a privileged, immemorial space, where things lose their shadow, where money loses its value, and where the extreme rarity of traces of what signals to us there leads men to seek the instantaneity of wealth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.... He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The torrent of the reaching shade Broke shadow into all its parts,... What then had been of shadow made Found exigence in fits and starts....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the shadow of death blots out my joy And erases the face of the sun... Give me strength to endure, hope to believe That living and dying are one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Do not human beings have a hard service on earth, and are not their days like the days of a laborer? Like a slave who longs for th...e shadow, and like laborers who look for their wages, so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not las...t.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »