Eventually there is nothing

– That’s not true.
— Alright.
Passive
I don’t care to disagree
– It feels wrong that you don’t disagree. I thought you would fight for this.
— You haven’t known me for long enough.
– What’s killed your optimism?
Optimism?
Optimism
That’s the paradox isn’t it
Because when it’s bad there doesn’t seem to be any
And it’s easy to think there never was
I remember accusing someone of exercising that exact same mechanic
– It’s not the same thing.
But it is
It is the same thing
All this anger and frustration
It changes things
It goes back and rewrites history
All those memories
All those progressive thoughts
They are fluid and a fiction
Always at the mercy of the present
– I’ve known you for long enough to know that you don’t do that. I know you better than to accept that you have no foresight.
— Alright.
Again
– Stop being passive. I want you to fight with me.
I don’t want to fight
I’m tired of fighting
I’m tired of asserting simple truths, having to battle for the most basic of things
– It’s always going to be hard work, no matter how you feel about it.
Perhaps it’s my day to be petulant and unjust
I’m tired of these people
Not a one of them is good enough
– You don’t indulge in such conceits. I know you better than that. Tomorrow you’ll feel differently.
So tomorrow I’ll think differently
Tonight
This evening
The world is not a good enough place for me
– Why are you losing sight of all the beauty that you yourself have seen? Why can’t you see it now?
— It’s not about that. That’s not the point.
The beauty doesn’t go away
There’s just no place for it right now
– I’m afraid that you’re more and more likely to make a decision based on how you feel now rather than the sum-total of your experience.
— There’s nothing I can do about that. Your fears. That’s your business.
And I feel the aggression
The obstinacy
The assertion of my privacy
So rarely can I divorce one thing from the other and indulge it without interference
— Allow me these few indulgences.
– But it’s because you don’t indulge that makes you who you are. What gives you the right to your pride.
But today it’s worth nothing
It gets me nothing
Tomorrow I will know its value and how important it is to my character
But tonight I want payment
I want reward
Gratification
The absolute indulgence in selfishness that everyone around me pursues with catastrophic abandon and desperate ignorance
Frantic paranoia without regard for anyone else
– You are not a selfish man. Not even now in your anger. Even I can see that.
And I hate that it’s true
Tonight I despise the discipline that keeps me from unadulterated selfishness
This is the best I can do
— Humility and resignation are more alike than I am comfortable in admitting.
– Yet you admit it. You admit to your anger, your selfishness, your weaknesses and your ignorance. It’s beautiful.
So perhaps that’s your role
To always maintain optimism
– No.
Stare
– Not at all.
Oh?
– I’m here to point out the obvious.
My brother says where there is life, there is hope
A paradigm both relevant and at the same time absolutely powerless
I say simply wishing for something does not make it so
And it is equally powerful and irrelevant

Today I am irrelevant
Today my experiences are irrelevant
Tomorrow they will be reconciled and so there is merit in patience
This much I have learned
— The thing you may not fully understand is that tomorrow my perspective will be different, but the emotions I examine now will be just as relevant, if not more relevant. They’re in the soup-cycle now. I put them in there – intentionally, deliberately. I want them to be in there. I want to face them, fear them and nurture them as much as everything else; the strangeness, the sense of affection and intimacy, the agility, the ceremonies and rituals, the celebrations of grief, tiny commonplace events and every-day occurrences.
I want you to face them
You need to see them
You need to really see them
And my visitor realises the nature of our conversation
Immediately ceases
And so we are sitting together in this room and not talking
Everything simultaneously getting worse
Everything simultaneously getting better
— Think slow. Perhaps you’d better just sleep on it. Tomorrow you’ll be able to see the detail; the scope. Just how broad it is.
– I think that’s what I’m beginning not to like, that breadth.
— Yeah well,
Welcome to my life
I didn’t exactly invite you directly
But it’s here if you want a piece of it
I’ll fix you drinks and show you around for as long as you want to be here
There’s plenty of company – that I can assure you
Never short of visitors