Not used to receiving praise, I tend to approach it with some disbelief.
But that makes me wonder if this might actually say more about myself
than the others, for whom we do not even have a proper name, unlike
their cunning brethren, well known as sycophants, flatterers, or toadies.
And I am always puzzled by how rich our vocabulary turns out to be
when a sinister nature lies on the dissecting table. The good one seems
flat and dull by comparison.
What is the difference between a farmhouse and a palace? None, if you call them both dwellings,
of course, and you can list similar pairs indefinitely: a redbrick and Oxbridge, a vicar and a pope,
bread and gâteau, and so on and so forth. When you think about it, it is only fair to add yourself
and your god. After all, you are each other’s creations.
Should I rather enjoy a pleasant slumber while being thoroughly aware of sleeping
or choose painless insomnia with its constant watching and waiting? There are also
heavenly bribes to virtue offered by religion, with its promise of happiness always
expressed in odd numbers. Perhaps if I ever envied someone’s moral high ground,
even if it was nothing but a long-forgotten echo of casual snobbery, I could simply
follow the lead instead of dwelling upon all this froth.
I have always liked phone books, but no one makes them any more. They were like bare graveyards
where each tombstone provided the necessary facts of life, only in their case, they were supposedly
about the living. I remember trying to convince myself that everyone there was waiting for me, even
if they were not, which was a fact of life of a sort, but I still tried to find an excuse for being naive.
I thought: if the world around me does not exist for me, what is the point? It hurt, but I kept telling
myself that it was going to be easier when I grew up. Now I am grown up, and it hurts even more.
And on that note, it is time for dinner. Like it or not, the body needs fuel more than anything else.
This is the ultimate fact of life.
As I lend this body to this mind, the question arises: what defines me?
Perhaps I am whatever will remain once we have basically established
what I am not. This, however, leaves us with two sets, which are likely
to expand ad infinitum, and as such, they might not necessarily be equal
in their implications.
hidden pilcrow 