unprecedented capitulation into the open arms of life

In Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller comes across as a man with a supreme lust for life. Here are some great passages from this book which I am currently reading. Anything I say would just spoil the pure emotion of these passages, so here they are free of my drivel...

She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately—a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us and we in each other’s arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks—a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die. (19)

Walking along the Champs-Elysees I keep thinking of my really superb health. When I say “health” I mean optimism, to be truthful. Incurably optimistic!...

My eye, but I’ve been all over that ground—year and years ago. I’ve lived out my melancholy youth. I don’t give fuck any more what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today! Le bel aujourd’hui. (49-50)

And my favorite bit so far:

For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens. (26)