Utopian communities, strategic withdrawals, interior expeditions, philosophical mountaineering, eremitical splits, secular monasticism, voluntary disappearance, intense reverie... the act of seceding has had many manifestations in the history of ideas. To secede is to extricate oneself from clothes hardened by habit, to get rid of the dust that slowly accumulates on forms cast by routine. You breathe it, you eat it, you drink it, and it's so thin, so tenuous that it doesn't even crunch under your teeth. But if you stop for a second, it covers your face, your hands and then your whole existence. Secession is not a form, a place or an attitude, but a state of constant panic that merges with the irrepressible urge of the funambulist to walk the tightrope of risk.