Euphoria

by Lily King

I am learning the chopped rhythm of their talk, the sound of their laughter, the cant of their heads. I can feel the relationships, the likes & dislikes in the room in a way I never could if I could speak. You don’t realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense.

My mind was stuck in conversation with her and the feeling of talking to her rang through me, disturbed me, woke me up as one wakes from sudden illness in the middle of the night.

Fierce desires, a great tide of feeling of which I could make little sense, an ache that seemed to have no name but want. I want. Intransitive. No object. It was the opposite of wanting to die. But it was scarcely more bearable.

What she said that night comes back to me at least once a day. Have I ever said anything to anyone that has come back once a day for 8 years?

Always in her mind there had been the belief that somewhere on earth there was a better way to live, and that she would find it.

He said surely it is more civilized to kill one man every few months, hold up his head for all to behold, say his name, and return home for a feast than to slaughter nameless millions.

Fen claims that if you just let go of your brain you find another brain, the group brain, the collective brain, and that it is an exhilarating form of human connection that we have lost in our embrace of the individual except when we go to war. Which is my point exactly.

She claimed that conformity created maladjustment and tradition could turn psychopathic. Her last sentences urged acceptance of cultural relativism and tolerance of differences.

‘See someone you know in there?’ one of the donors said, and the others laughed nervously. Caught in the holes of the button were tufts of pale blue thread. I forced myself on to the next display. It was only a button. It was only a bit of thread. From a wrinkled blue dress I had once undone.