Word: feels
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...other stimuli we consciously subject ourselves to is to put us into neutral--to free us from stimulation. We eat food to free us from hunger and to save our bodies from weakness and deficiencies. We adjust the thermostat in our rooms so that we will have to feel neither cold, nor heat. We want to hang in the middle, to reach a stasis in how we feel. This is what we think of as our "natural" condition. From here, we presumably, we can experience anything that might happen...
Before I dared to take NoDoz for the first time, I thought it would turn me into a zombie, a being so dehumanized that he wouldn't feel the natural coming on of sleep. After a while I came to realize that the chemicals in my body that combined to produce the effect of sleepiness were merely being altered by others of their kind -- friendly, similarly structured chemicals. In other words, that sleepiness wasn't something spiritual that had been violated by chemistry...
Think of all the ways you feel. Up. Down. Eager. Relieved. Curious. Hungry. Tired. Think of sexual ecstasy. Here we have the most intense human emotion we can feel. And it doesn't bother us to know that it's made up of the mustering of chemical stimuli, the organizing of the flow of desires...
Another thing is that you are generally unable to feel emotion. You can't love anyone or want anything; you can only order its existence. You can't care about anything in a way that you feel; you can only be interested in it in an intellectual way. This absence of emotion can be frightening, but only so if you believe yourself to be on a a "trip." You are equally incapable of emotion while playing tennis or doing anyone of a great set of totally occupying things. Do you ever stop playing tennis for fear of departing from...
...play opens, we find him talking with his friend Donald, as shy Cornell drop-out, about their respective analysts, over-loving mothers and financial blues. Gradually they reveal the defense mechanisms that help them survive in a world where "failure is the only thing with which [they] feel at home." For Donald, the only escape is to go to the library and read book after book. Michael, worried about getting old, stays alive with the help of self-deprecating wisecracks ("Well, one thing you can say about masturbation. . . you certainly don't have to look your best...