If I seem a little bizarre, remember the wild profusion of my inheritance...perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teemin… - Salman Rushdie

perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.

We, the public, are easily, lethally offended. We have come to think of taking offence as a fundamental right. We value very little more highly than our rage, which gives us, in our opinion, the moral high ground. From this high ground we can shoot down at our enemies and inflict heavy fatalities. We take pride in our short fuses. Our anger elevates, transcends.

In death do triumph and failure humbly meet. We learn far less from victory than from defeat.

Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.