I continued Houellebecq on the beach. Civilisation dies of weariness [and] self-disgust. And I’m writing this on the beach, my glasses slipping from my ears and hand quavering because the sun disappeared behind a thin layer of altostratus clouds. I don’t think social democracy suits me any longer either, but maybe it hasn’t suited anyone for a long time or ever. The choices are diffuse and expecting, and the disillusion is to believe it matters.
Again, I thought of Lena and her face over the chess board, her mumbles of he can’t take my knight…I’m going to castle. How is that not checkmate? And I, in a moment of watching her,
I love you because you try the things I love.
But I have to, because I’ll be with you forever.
I spent a long time imprisoned, and I was kept along by the wrong motivations. I think that I always wanted a life I never believed in, or couldn’t stomach—a life filled with people lonelier than I, though their loneliness must’ve been so much worse, full of performances kept alive for so long that the play became real. That guy goes home with that girl at the end of the night, but she doesn’t belong to him—he’s just a man in the queue whose turn is up.
We’re arrested by the moves we make versus the game we want to play, quietly unmoored that the same choices leading to defeat are being made again and again. Suddenly you’re paralyzed; and the pieces that remain have their backs on the last rank, the kings of civilization murmuring how did we get here?
I stood up and made my way to the late afternoon water, just on the edge of the white flag that signaled you could still be saved if you’re drowning. It was warmer to be submerged in the cold sheets of wave swelling over the head, where I’d hold my glasses in my hand and hold my breath as I let it lay over me, but my buoyant body kept ascending to the top. The sun wasn’t coming out any more.
but I have to.