Now you have gathered yourself up; you see your own end before you, in your own hands; every now and then, with an imprecise movement, you trace the contours of your face. And within you there is scarcely any room; and it almost calms you....

But outside, outside there is no end to it; and when it rises out there, it fills up inside you as well-- not in the vessels, which are partly in your own control, or in the phlegm of your more impassive organs, but in the capillaries, sucked as if up a tube into the furthermost branches of your infinitely ramified being. There it arises, there it passes over you, rising higher than your breath, to which you have fled as if to your final resting place. Ah, but where will you go from there, where? Your heart is driving you out of yourself, your heart is after you, and you are almost beside yourself and you can't go back....

--from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge; Rainer Maria Rilke