The mind has its own tools to ward off boredom of humdrum life. Zarathustra lived alone for ten years in a cave in complete seclusion. Mohammed would leave his wife's warm bosom and walk all the way to a mount top in wind and rain, in sand storm and blazing sun. Oedipus lived his last years alone in a cave, blind and isolated. Timon of Athens left palace and luxury and went to live in the wilderness. The Marquis de Sade lived 28 years in prison and asylum. Charles Manson has been in prison since 1969 to date. The secret behind these and other people's endurance of such conditions is that there is deep down in the human psyche a soothing feeling of a visceral attachment to one's surroundings and things. Some say that thanks to this visceral attachment, people will not only endure, but love hell
This feeling of visceral attachment to things is part of fetish which is an essential element of the human psyche. I for one, love to keep envelopes of letters and parcels I receive by post. Back home in Mosul I have envelopes I received in 1959. I also love the smell of fresh newspapers because the smell arouses in me boyhood feelings and memories when in mid-1950s I once by chance smelt a newspaper my dad used to get by post every day. It was AL-ZAMAN newspaper. In LEAVES OF GRASS, Walt Whitman in the "On Myself" section, says that he enjoyed smell of his shit when one day he was shitting outdoors in Monument Valley, Arizona. In Steinbeck's GRAPES OF WRATH, the old man refuses to leave home to go to California. He picks up a handful of dirty dust and says, "This is dirt, but it is mine and I love it."