The Map That Leads to You

by J.P. Monninger

For an instant, you see the party for what it is—a mating ritual, a celebration of coitus—and you start to turn away because you are smarter than this, cooler than this, quieter than this.

“What’s the opposite of a romantic? I’ve always wondered.” “An accountant, I guess. A person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

I took out my cell phone to take a picture, but Jack stopped me. “Would you mind,” he asked, “if we didn’t take a picture?” I lowered the phone. “Why not?” He moved his hand slowly on Cygnet’s nose. His voice was serious but sweet. “I don’t want to cheapen the experience,” he said. “Or turn it into a little snapshot. I want to be here with the horses, that’s all. And with you. I hate taking photos of everything. It means what’s going on now is only this thing we perform so we can take pictures and look at them later. Stick them on Facebook. It dilutes whatever we’re doing. That’s kind of what I think, anyway.”

Have you ever heard someone say that books are places we visit and that when we run into people who have read the books we have read, it’s the same as if we had traveled to the same locations? We know something about them because they have lived in the same worlds we have lived. We know what they live for.”

It felt like everything had been asleep for a long time, and then morning came and everything began to wake up.”

“Weltschmerz,” I said, feeling the heaviness of the word as it passed my lips. “German for world weariness and pain. It’s the idea that physical reality can never meet the demands of the mind.

“Weltschmerz. Unnamed dread and fatigue of the world. That’s the definition.”

“Of course it’s crazy. Everything is crazy. The whole world is crazy. Didn’t you know that, Heather? Didn’t you know everyone is an imposter and there are no real adults in the next room?”