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She was always so quick to agree with everything I said. What a way to live. Were her own thoughts so nebulous they couldn’t resist the pull of other people’s opinions and ideas?
Like most people these days, I don’t overthink things. I’ll go along with whatever. No firm beliefs, no hang-ups. Just a lack of self-confidence tangled up in fatalistic resignation. Whatever the situation, nothing ever reaches me on an emotional level. Nothing’s important. Because I won’t let it be. I operate on mood alone. No regrets, no looking back.
In the waking world, I obsess over the superficial. I devote myself to the acme of emptiness. And that devotion infiltrates my dreams, the world of my unconscious. Covered in thick plastic – that’s how I’ve made myself. Over years and years. The sadistic act of self-creation.
He always had the weirdest way of talking – brutal one second, sweet the next. Before I knew it, I was nodding.
The windows shone a secretive blue.
(My days here are like tissue paper too, I suppose – I float around, dazed, and any memories of the past are blurred and hard to pin down.)
As always, I began to laugh. I felt a twinge of loneliness but I laughed anyway.
Suddenly, I felt the space that we occupied (a vague concept in itself) start to shrink and recede. Life as a fresh and complex entity was drying out and threatening to disappear fast. The caretaker of the soul hung his head low in shame. ‘Oh dear, god has disappeared somewhere,’ I screamed. Is this a bad trip from all the grim talk?
But this was too horrible. In only three years. When we first met, Reiko still had something of a wrecked beauty. Now, not even those ruins remained.
Even when she clung to him like this, she felt that the largest part of him was off wandering through some unknown territory all alone. Even in her arms, he was always able to liberate himself from her, to make himself free. She envied him that. Sol was an alien.
‘Like commercials for gravestones.’ I said the first thing that popped into my head. ‘Now that you mention it, sure. Hell is keeping a low profile these days, and the whole country is under the spell of this image of Heaven. The difference, though, is that with Hell at least you know what you’re getting. But with Heaven, everything’s ambiguous. There are no actively good feelings, just a passive, ambiguous contentment.’
Nothing eases the boredom, of course. Aside from maybe when a pop star I’ve decided I like is on. It’s not that I like the content of the programming itself. So much of it is total trash. I just enjoy the feeling of sitting there spacing out in front of the TV set. Because I don’t have to be active. Doing anything of my own volition is so painful that I can’t handle it. If I can just avoid that pain, that’s enough for me.
The screen flared to life, and I could see that HE was kneeling with HIS forehead pressed to the ground. ‘Please, say something. I love you, for starters. You’re my angel – no, my devil, my lovely devil. I mean it.’
Even in this day and age, we still revere truth. But at the same time, we devote ourselves to the task of erasing the distinction between truth and fiction.
