Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

and the free press. The last, which is usually seen as a victory, ablessing, a "right," is perhaps the most pernicious of all, because itfeeds on what the other three horsemen leave behind.The demographic explosion, on the other hand, strikes me as soterrifying that I still dream of a cosmic catastrophe that would wipeout two billion of us. Of course, a disaster of this kind would makesense only if it were the result of a natural upheaval~an earthquake,for example, or a plague. I have great respect for these natural forces,whereas I can't endure the makers of petty disasters who bury us alittle deeper every day in our communal grave while telling us,hypocrites that they are, how "impossible" it is to do otherwise.Imaginatively speaking, all forms of life are equally valuableeven the fly, which seems to me as enigmatic and as admirable asthe fairy. But now that I'm alone and old, I foresee only catastropheand chaos. I know that old people always say that the sun was warmerwhen they were young, and I also realize how commonplace it is toannounce the end of the world at the end of each millennium. Nonetheless,I still think the entire century is moving toward some cataclysmicmoment. Evil seems victorious at last; the forces of destructionhave carried the day; the human mind hasn't made any progresswhatsoever toward clarity. Perhaps it's even regressed. We live in anage of frailty, fear, and morbidity. Where will the kindness andintelligence come from that can save us? Even chance seems impotent.I was born at the dawn of the century, and my lifetime oftenseems to me like an instant. Events in my childhood sometimes seemso recent that I have to make an effort to remember that they happenedfifty or sixty years ago. And yet at other times life seems tome very long. The child, or the young man, who did this or thatdoesn't seem to have anything to do with me anymore.In 1975, when I was in New York with Silberman, we went toan Italian restaurant I'd been fond of thirty-five years before. Theowner had died, but his wife recognized me, and I suddenly felt asif I'd eaten there just a few days before. Time is so changeable thatthere's just not much point in repeating how much the world has