ASTONISH YOURSELF:

101 EXPERIMENTS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF

EVERYDAY LIFE

Roger-Pol Droit

2 ASTONISH YOURSELF [

1. Call yourself

2. Empty a word of its meaning

3. Look in vain for “I”

4. Make the world last twenty minutes

5. See the stars below you

6. See a landscape as a stretched canvas

7. Lose something and not know what

8. Recall where you were this morning

9. Hurt yourself briefly

10. Feel eternal

11. Telephone at random

12. Rediscover your room after a journey

13. Drink while urinating

14. Make a wall between your hands

15. Walk in the dark

16. Dream of all the places in the world

17. Peel an apple in your head

18. Imagine yourself high up

19. Imagine your imminent death

20. Try to measure existence

21. Count to a thousand

22. Dread the arrival of the bus

23. Run in a graveyard

24. Play the fool

25. Watch a woman at her window

26. Invent lives for yourself

27. Look at people from a moving car

28. Follow the movement of ants

29. Eat a nameless substance

30. Watch dust in the sun

31. Resist tiredness

32. Overeat

33. Play the animal

34. Contemplate a dead bird

35. Come across a childhood toy

36. Wait while doing nothing

37. Try not to think

38. Go to the hairdresser

39. Shower with your eyes closed

40. Sleep on your front in the sun

41. Go to the circus

42. Try on clothes

] ASTONISH YOURSELF 3

43. Calligraphize

44. Light a fire in the hearth

45. Be aware of yourself speaking

46. Weep at the cinema

47. Meet up with friends after several years

48. Browse at the bookseller's

49. Become music

50. Pull out a hair

51. Walk in an imaginary forest

52. Demonstrate on your own

53. Stay in the hammock

54. Invent headlines

55. Listen to short-wave radio

56. Turn off the sound on the TV

57. Rediscover a childhood scene that seemed larger

58. Get used to eating something you don't like

59. Fast for a while

60. Rand for ten minutes

61. Drive through a forest

62. Give without thinking about it

63. Look for a blue food

64. Become a saint or sinner

65. Recover lost memories

66. Watch someone sleeping

67. Work on a holiday

68. Consider humanity to be an error

69. Inhabit the planet of small gestures

70. Disconnect the phone

71. Smile at a stranger

72. Enter the space of a painting

73. Leave the cinema in daytime

74. Plunge into cold water

75. Seek out immutable landscapes

76. Listen to a recording of your voice

77. Tell a stranger she is beautiful

78. Believe in the existence of a smell

79. Wake up without knowing where

80. Descend an interminable staircase

81. Swallow your emotion

82. Fix the ephemeral

83. Decorate a room

84. Laugh at an idea

4 ASTONISH YOURSELF [

85. Vanish at a pavement cafe

86. Row on a lake in your room

87. Prowl at night

88. Become attached to an object

89. Sing the praises of Santa Claus

90. Play with a child

91. Encounter pure chance

92. Recite the telephone directory on your knees

93. Think about what other people are doing

94. Practice make-believe everywhere

95. Kill people in your head

96. Take the subway without going anywhere

97. Remove your watch

98. Put up with a chatterbox

99. Clean up after the party

100. Find the infinitesimal caress

101. Etc.