Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.
-- Jack Kerouac, ON THE ROAD
From the very moment when Eve ate the apple from the tree of knowledge, mankind was doomed to strive endlessly after the truth. First, Adam and Eve discovered that they were naked. And they were ashamed. They were ashamed because they had understood; and then they set out on their way in the joy of knowing one another. That was the beginning of a journey that had no end. One can understand how dramatic that moment was for those two souls, just emerged from the state of placid ignorance and thrown out into the vastness of the earth, hostile and inexplicable. So it was that man, "nature's crown," arrived on the earth in order to know why it was that he had appeared or been sent.
In the great crises of life, in the supreme moments when to be or not to be is the question, little tricks of suggestion do not help. Sana was deep in love with him. And he, with that knowledge, only reacted unconsciously. For we do not react only with our consciousness. He recalled a dream he had during this time, where she was on the side of a road and he was whizzing by in the passenger seat of a fast-moving vehicle; he was holding out a hand to her, trying to somehow grab her into the car from the feeling of impending doom. Dreams are, after all, compensations for the conscious attitude.
