Revelations

The first light to come on was that of the Caillebotte lighthouse; a little boy stopped near me and murmured ecstatically: ‘Oh, the lighthouse!’
Then I felt my heart swell with a great feeling of adventure.
[…]

I am alone, most people have gone home, they are reading the evening paper and listening to the wireless. This Sunday which is drawing to a close has left them with a taste of ashes and already their thoughts are turning towards Monday. But for me there is neither Monday nor Sunday: there are days which push one another along in disorder, and then, all of a sudden, revelations like this.

Nothing has changed and yet everything exists in a different way. I can’t describe it; it’s like the Nausea and yet it’s just the opposite: at last an adventure is happening to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here: it is I who am piercing the darkness, I am as a happy as the hero of a novel.

– Sartre, Nausea (tr. Baldick)