THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

I always liked the back lanes, dark and remote little crannies, away from the main square – there lay adventure, there lay the unexpected, nuggets in the dirt.  I’m speaking allegorically, brother.  In that little town there were no such back lanes, physically, but morally there were.  If you were the same as me, you’d know what that means.  I loved depravity, I also loved the shame of depravity.  I loved cruelty: am I not a bedbug, an evil insect?

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I was passing through Mokroye, and I asked an old man, and he told me: ‘Best of all,’ he said,’ we like sentencing the girls to be whipped, and we let the young lads do the whipping.  Next day the young lad takes the girl he’s whipped for his bride, so you see, our girls themselves go for it.’ 

Dostoevsky/Karamazov