fall prey to desire

Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies-my only talent-smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an annoyance, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall-on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.

--Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Ironically, I read this book when I was 31 and in the middle of discovering, or more aptly, naming my own good nose for merde. With all that is happening (or not happening) in the world today I feel the malaise like fall-out. I will not be defeated by the everydayness.