After reading Mr. Junger's Eumeswil, The Peace, and fragments from "Glass bees", I approached this book desiring to acknowledge a combatant's point of view on the notion of pain, resilience, hardening and maturation. I was not disappointed. Although I haven't witnessed a war, I underwent mental torment in psychoses, and several years ago I decided to confront it and rise above the pain it inflicted. It paid off, as I am much more disciplined, stern, and focused than ever before and it took me years to get there. Relation to pain is like thanatology - death and pain is hidden, we merely engage in spectator's sport. Although one may blame the pain-triumphant on the experiences of war, it is merely an inevitable warning from a more experienced man. I observe character-less (ethosless) faces of men and women everyday in the streets of Warsaw, they are a cry for a future tragedy. They melted into a mass a long time ago, I observe other European physiognomies like Europeans see Asians - they are similar in their bureacratic-technocratic dullness. Yet, yet, when a face strikes me with gesture, raw beauty, character and robust experience written all over it - a rare view - I attempt to drink its thoughts, suspended between the object and the subject in an unwritten recognition. That is how a woman I onced loved was - raw, wild, heroic, and embracing my pain in silence, proud of my overcoming, silently appraising my forging. ( )

After reading Mr. Junger's Eumeswil, The Peace, and fragments from "Glass bees", I approached this book desiring to acknowledge a combatant's point of view on the notion of pain, resilience, hardening and maturation. I was not disappointed. Although I haven't witnessed a war, I underwent mental torment in psychoses, and several years ago I decided to confront it and rise above the pain it inflicted. It paid off, as I am much more disciplined, stern, and focused than ever before and it took me years to get there. Relation to pain is like thanatology - death and pain is hidden, we merely engage in spectator's sport. Although one may blame the pain-triumphant on the experiences of war, it is merely an inevitable warning from a more experienced man. I observe character-less (ethosless) faces of men and women everyday in the streets of Warsaw, they are a cry for a future tragedy. They melted into a mass a long time ago, I observe other European physiognomies like Europeans see Asians - they are similar in their bureacratic-technocratic dullness. Yet, yet, when a face strikes me with gesture, raw beauty, character and robust experience written all over it - a rare view - I attempt to drink its thoughts, suspended between the object and the subject in an unwritten recognition. That is how a woman I onced loved was - raw, wild, heroic, and embracing my pain in silence, proud of my overcoming, silently appraising my forging. ( )