Man dreads to be alone.

And of all kinds of isolation,

inward isolation is the most appalling.

The early anchorite lived with God;

he dwelt in the spirit world,

the most populous world of all.

The miser lives in a world

of imagination and fruition;

his whole life and all that he is,

even his sex, lies in his brain.

A man's first thought,

be he leper or convict,

hopelessly sick or degraded,

is to find another with a like fate

to share it with him.

He will exert the utmost that is in him, 

every power, all his vital energy,

to satisfy that craving;

it is his very life.

(Jacques Colin aka Carlos Herrera)

(art by Konrad Banaszkiewicz)