The word Absurdity is emerging under my pen; a little while ago, in the garden, 1
couldn't find it, but neither was I looking for it, I didn't need it: I thought without words,
on things, with things. Absurdity was not an idea in my head, or the breath of a voice,
only this long serpent dead at my feet, this serpent of wood. Serpent or claw or root
or vulture's talon, what difference does it make? And without formulating anything
clearly, I understood that I had found the clue to existence, the clue to my nausea, to
my own life. In fact, all I could grasp beyond that comes down to this fundamental
absurdity. Absurdity: another word. I struggle against words; beneath me there !
touched the thing. But I wanted to fix the absolute character of this absurdity. A
movement, an event in the tiny colored world of men is only relatively absurd -- in
relation to the accompanying circumstances. A madman's ravings, for example, are
absurd in relation to the situation in which he is, but not in relation to his own delirium.
But a little while ago I made an experiment with the absolute or the absurd. This root
- there was nothing in relation to which it was absurd. How can I pin it down with
words? Absurd: in relation to the stones, the tufts of yellow grass, the dry mud, the
tree, the sky, the green benches. Absurd, irreducible, nothing -- not even a profound.
secret delirium of nature could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had
not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw.
neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and
reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by
the rotation of the segment of a straight line around one of its extremities. But neither
does a circle exist. This root, in contrast, existed in such a way that I could not
explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back
unceasingly to its own existence. In vain I repeated. "This is a root" - it didn't take
hold anymore. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a
Suction pump. to that, to that hard and thick skin of a sea lion, to this oily, Callous
stubborn look. The function explained nothing it allowed you to understand in
general what a root was, but not at all that one there. That root with its color, shape,
its congealed movement, was beneath all explanation. Each of its qualities escaped
a little flowed out of it, half solidified, almost became a thing each one was
superfluous in the root and the whole stump now gave me the impression of uncoiling
out of itself a little, denying itself, losing itself in a frenzied excess I scraped my heef
Identify one example of existential absurdity from the text. Use a quote from the text