all of a sudden people start talkin bout guns like they're going to war...

[unlike]

so, then people do come here in order to live; i would sooner have thought one died here. i have been out. i saw: hospitals. i saw a man who swayed and sank to the ground. people gathered round him, so i was spared the rest. i saw a pregnant woman. she was pushing herself cumbrously along a high, warm wall, groping for it now and again as if to convince herself it was still there. yes, it was still there ... the street began to smell from all sides. a smell, so far as one could distinguish, of iodoform, of the grease of pommes frites, of fear. all cities smell in summer. then i saw a curiously purblind house; it was not to be found on the map, but above the door there stood, still fairly legible: asyle de nuit. beside the entrance were the prices. i read them. the place was not expensive.

and what else? a child in a standing baby carriage. it was fat. greenish, and had a distinct eruption on its forehead. this was evidently peeling as it healed and did not hurt. the child slept, its mouth was open, breathing iodoform, pommes frites and fear. it was simply like that. the main thing was, being alive. that was the main thing.

-- rainer maria rilke. the notebooks of malte laurids brigge.