Vertigo

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

I ought to have put quotation marks around that. It comes from ma bible, 'The Unbearable Lightness Of Being' (bible is too strong a word, but it's a sexy book nonetheless), written by Milan Kundera. 

I'm conceited enough to consider my aspirations 'high', but perhaps I'm nothing more than an affected provincial (according to dandyism.net's utterly unreliable test). But sometimes I'm overcome with a vertiginous desire to fall, to let my body rule, to eat like a slob, to watch rubbish on television, to obsess over money, to watch and be swayed by advertisements, to worship the celebrity, to read those abominable 'newspapers' that come out every evening at train stations... The list is interminable. Luckily I stop myself before the condition becomes terminal and I claw my way up to a mental and spiritual superiority. 

To fall from the dandy's height (and I am not yet a dandy, and may never be one) is scarily attractive - sometimes the desire to drop it all and fall is strong.