oscar wilde party — tokyo 2000

A party, like a meeting for worship, is not operating on the level of reason.... It transcends logic. It slides willingly and consciously (if it is a good party) toward a celebration of the fact of being alive. The celebrants at a party share bread and wine and reach toward a communal touching, for a moment, of an existence that is not limited by the individual ego. The sound of a party is a sound of amity, of human beings who have become for a moment, and for nonaggressive reasons, something outside themselves.

— Jessamyn West, To See the Dream, part 1 (1956).