go on

Perhaps I regret not having been able to become an American. Perhaps. In my zeal now, which is again American, I am about to give birth to a monstrous edifice, a skyscraper, which will last undoubtedly long after the other skyscrapers have vanished, but which will vanish too when that which produced it disappears. Everything American will disappear one day, more completely than that which was Greek, or Roman, or Egyptian. This is one of the ideas which pushed me outside of the warm, comfortable bloodstream where, buffaloes all, we once grazed in peace. An idea that has caused me infinite sorrow, for not to belong to something enduring is the last agony. But I am not a buffalo and I have no desire to be one. I am not even a spiritual buffalo. I have slipped away to rejoin an older stream of consciousness, a race antecedent to the bufaloes, a race that will survive the buffalo.

henry miller / tropic of capricorn / 1957