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“And you?”

“I’ll wait somewhere far outside myself, until everything calms down.”

“You’re afraid of responsibility.”

“Oh fantastic! What else — any more genius insight?”

“Well what do you want me to say?”

“Did I ask you to say anything in the first place?”

“If we’re having a conversation I have to say something.”

“Oh please. The problem is you don’t believe me.”

“It’s not a matter of believing or not. It just comes off sounding stupid. And even offensive.”

“Offensive how? Are you offended? If you are I’m sorry, I’ve never wanted to offend you.”

“But you did. And in a really strange way, too. Everyone is inside themselves, in their bodies, but you, you’re outside yourself. Like you’re a princess, something special. It’s terrible. And so weird — like Pulp Fiction or something.”

“I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. But you’re right to say it, thanks.”

“So now I’m capable of saying something right after all!”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not! Did I say something wrong? The way I see it, you have to live free and easy, in a single breath. And if you’re having thoughts like these there’s a glitch in your system. Something’s gone wrong. I don’t get you.”

“Fine, you don’t get me. I can’t force you to understand if you don’t have the capacity to in the first place.”

“So, what will you do?”

“Well finally! The king of questions! What will you do? Amazing! Think about these words. What. Will. You. Do. They’re like the salt of the earth, but at the same time so simple.”

“Hey, don’t overanalyze everything — be it breathing or language. It’s not productive, it’s an obstacle. It was a serious question, pragmatic and realistic — what will you do? Are you going to pine away like this forever?”

“But hold up, these words! Listen—what will you do? In that specific order, with that hierarchy, and not the other way around. Not what do you will? The will always comes first and the doing always follows. If you look at it the right way, you could pave paths to a better world.”

“Great. And what kind of world do you want to discover? One without pain?”

“When Monta was little, her favorite story was about the Golden City. In the Golden City, wolves and sheep are friends. The Golden City doesn’t need night to understand what day is. It doesn’t need death to value life. It’s a world without contrast. You know, Monta almost had me convinced. ‘You’re sad,’ she told me. And I knew then that she’d be perfectly willing to trade knowledge for ignorance if only she could be in a world without pain.”

“Without joy and hate? Without sorrow and passion, without desire?”

“That would be a boring place, bored-to-death boring… and useless. I said this to her. She argued with me that death is something grown-ups invented so they wouldn’t be bored. Grown-ups are sad, grown-ups do all kinds of stupid things just so they can understand something.”

“A dead boring world is a paradise.”

“Paradise?”

“Or a hell.”

“Something solitary is dead boring?”

“Something solitary is death itself.”

“And so listen, my little deity, who just a minute ago wanted to create a world sans the shadows of evil — listen! The mind of man is small and his dreams are within reason. They’re only the safe, good, and painless ones. It’s not worth wasting any energy.”

“Evil takes care of itself.”

“Wasting energy for evil is even dumber.”

“Then what’s left? Watching how life lives my body?”

“Yeah, better to chase after events like a bloodhound. This endless clash of black and white is colorful.”

“Why did you say that being outside yourself was worse than slitting your wrists?”

“Back then, when I was with Aksels, love justified everything we did. Even the most horrible and incomprehensible things.”

“You needed justification? Who were you trying to justify yourself to?”

“Not like that. That’s not what I meant. The sense, y’know? The sense.”

“Sense. Strange word.”

“Well yeah. Now I do everything with consideration, I try to be precise and guided by experience, but all that sensibility goes to waste. It’s a calculation! Correctly calculated empty accomplishments and losses. It’s all trivial. Once it was high tide. Now it’s low tide. I’ve been washed away from myself.”

“I’ve started a path, but I don’t know if it’s for my benefit or not. But I can’t stop or turn back. It’ll be a test, hey! — it’ll be an interesting experiment — will I be able to take my idea and create a path? You can write your final dissertation on it! I’m in two. It’s the only thing that fascinates me and keeps me alive! Me and my body.”

“Maybe it is the onset of some kind of psychological disease. Maybe we can still do something about it.”

“You could, but only if the goals of both of me line up.”

“What’s your body’s goal?”

“Love, laugh, stay sane, be as strong as a mighty oak for myself and for others.”

“And what’s your goal?”

“To not be here.”

“Maybe you’re confused. Maybe your goal is to observe.”

“Observe?”

“Observe. If you’re destined to be outside yourself anyway. Maybe your joy comes from observing your physical body and the physical bodies of others, to observe life, fate, how they come together and part, and come together again. Observe and believe you understand something when something becomes clear; that it might be the answer to at least one question.”

“Thanks, brother. You’ve got some highly flattering opinions of me.”

“You look that arrogant, by the way. You would be the one to come up with something like that.”

“When the essence of things reveals itself, you stop doing them automatically. That’s what I meant. But maybe something else, though, I don’t know. No one is themselves in conversation. It’s what does exist that talks through us. A million mouths, a million eyes.”

“Don’t get mad, but seems to me you can’t love.”

“That’s it?”

“Only love.”

“That’s almost too simple.”

“But it’s true. Everything else is trivial and made-up.”

“Why?”

“Love isn’t in your control. It comes to you. There’s no other way. You’re whole again. You don’t question anything.”

“But I do have questions! Okay, so it turns out I don’t have love. And I can’t answer any other way in the face of a logical confession. And here we are.”

“And so you want me to pity you?”

“No. No need to pity, to be sad for me, to express your opinion, nothing. I’m glad that you met me for lunch today, that you sat here, drank black tea. Thank you for carefully picking the bones from your trout and putting them on the fish bone plate. Thank you for convincing me to order this delicious cod. Fish contains phosphorus, which promotes thinking. Thank you for not talking. Thank you for saying a few things that I can spend a lifetime thinking about if I wanted to. Want is at the center of everything. Simple, straightforward want. So everything happens because we want it to. It’s the world we live in. It’s so important! You know… Sometimes I need this more than anything, for you to be sitting there, across from me, drinking tea. It’s like your eyes are a chair I can sit and rest in for a while. Thank you.”

“Such lavish thank yous. And thanks for that!”