The Triumph of Death, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1562.

Monica Belucci, 1992

Here the older waiter distinguishes himself further from the younger waiter and aligns himself with people like the old man—people who need a light for the night in order to stave off despair and loneliness. For the older waiter, the café and other places like it represent order and safety during the questioning night. His work there brings him a sense of purpose that distracts him from thoughts about the kind of "nothing" that brings the old man such despair.

Housing development in Los Angeles in 1954.

“A ‘scientific’ interpretation of the world might be one of the most stupid, as it would be one of the poorest in meaning.”

—The Gay Science, §373 (edited excerpt).

Richard Ramirez

The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.

— Jack Kerouac, from The Dharma Bums

Rain and Fog on Hills Lake
North Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

A man enjoys a boat ride on Lake Powell in 1973.