[I wrote this short story in 2003, and am happy to have found it again on a dusty hard drive. Enjoy!]
I am a man of simple means. I lead a simple life. From day to day, I move slowly and attempt only to get by. There is no extravagant flavor, no luxury, no excess. This is not so much a result of poverty. It is not the result of making virtues out of necessities. I was left some money years ago and it still keeps me afloat, although not enough to float in any particular direction.
Occasionally, I let myself be involved with a woman, but I make sure not to lose any sleep over complexities stemming from these kinds of relationships. In that sense, I have made many women disappointed. I have wanted little more than sexual comfort and have hardly reacted when, after a period of seemingly frustrated union, the women in question have expressed their dramatic goodbyes. The most honest relationships I’ve ever had with women, have been with prostitutes.
I know I must sound fairly dispassionate. In many ways, that may be true. But I did once have a passion or an obsession I felt passionate about. It was what I felt strongly for, the only thing I lived strongly in and through. Everyday I had to see something new, experience something new. As a child, this was already an imprinted behavior. I was depressed whenever I was unable to explore and find something new, albeit just a little thing, like a street I’d never walked on or a new expression I heard that I could understand by myself.
No wonder then, that I early on took a liking to books. Each book is a new experience, and the supply is endless. But I eventually realized that a book is basically just a second-hand impression. Books can certainly still lift my mind and pleasantly let it wander. But it struck me that although the flights were different, the experience as such was the same. Always the same. Since that realization, my relationship to books hasn’t been quite the same.
I’ve journeyed far and wide, but always returned home to my apartment in the busy capital. That’s where I planned and strategized my new experiences. I know how paradoxical this must sound, but still it was a part of my life: planning or, after the fact, evaluating. Those were the fixed points, the beginning and the end. Everything in-between had to be something new or I lost interest immediately. ”To lose interest” isn’t quite an appropriate expression of how I felt though. I was now at the point where my facing the same thing or person or environment appeared as a grave threat to me. It wasn’t boredom as much as an existential ennui that grew like a black flower out of soil that rests upon death itself.
When I was younger, I didn’t feel the need to search so actively. I wasn’t trapped in my own fixed ideas. It was important for me to let life as such flow over and past me, to watch but never partake of it. This gave me great pleasure for many years without my really thinking about it. But gradually I became more and more conscious of what I needed. If I went to bed without having experienced something substantially new during the day, I felt let down by myself. So of course I avoided that feeling by changing my life and started chasing the unknown.
I went to a different restaurant each night. This in itself took a lot of time, as I had to go to new areas of the city every evening. Thereby I had chances to make other kinds of new experiences too. To the greatest extent possible, I shopped my necessities all over the city too. As I had no job or other commitments, I could take time-consuming detours and justify quite erratic behavior, like realizing I had walked on a certain street before and then turning back to choose a new one. My life was soon run by my obsession.
I tried traveling for lengthy periods of time, certain that the freedom of the world would allow me the inner sense of freedom I thought I longed for. But even in that, I took a wrong turn. I noticed that after a while I just wanted to be back at my apartment. Back at planning the future and back at evaluating the past. Adapting to what my needs dictated: a new experience every day.
Could it be that it wasn’t freedom as such I craved? I didn’t really know what freedom meant. Free? I didn’t feel free at all, yet to most people I must have appeared very free, or at least very carefree.
In my late twenties I took consolation in Eastern philosophies and tried to approach a simpler way of life. Even here, I could only affect change on the outside. This was a good thing in many ways, I felt, as I let material veils fall one by one. I didn’t have many possessions except for books – I still clung to them, fearing superstitiously what would happen if I’d let go of those old and trustworthy comrades. I only had a few sets of clothes, good but simple furniture, good but simple things in general. Nothing fanciful, but good, reliable quality. I took notes in tough, solid notebooks and kept these numbered for quick reference. I could go back and check what I had experienced three, five or even ten years ago.
In a way, this minimalistic environment and routine became a two-edged sword for me, and I knew that all along. On one hand it allowed me only a minimum of distraction. I could notice how other people around me – shallow acquaintances as well as complete strangers – were not in charge of their own lives. Their frenzied hunt for things and objects to fill their lives with meaning occasionally filled me with glee and a superior satisfaction stemming from not having to be bothered about things like that. And, of course, from also having actively excluded both thought and action leading to that kind of enslavement.
On the other hand, my own simple, almost ascetic, life allowed me a lot of time and space to reflect on myself. I could understand that this was definitely missing in a lot of people’s lives, but in mine it just made me more aware that I was a slave of a different kind. Not to materialistic and soulless greed, but still a slave to a desire that I could no longer control. Consciously I knew that I was simplifying things too much by thinking that if I didn’t experience something new each day life was meaningless. But that was the line of thinking I was used to.
The logical conclusion of this more and more desperate reasoning, was that there was in essence only one more thing for me to experience: death. Death was basically the only thing that would be new to me in life. I could chase new continents and geographical treasure troves, only to find myself needing to go back home. I could walk new streets or approach new people or read new books, but the quintessential experience of each would be the very same as before. To sum up: I had run out of new experiences and it made me uneasy.
As there was no-one I could call a close friend or ally, nor any relatives left that I could confide in, I was facing a new side of myself I dreaded. In my desperation, I realized I was alone. My desperation developed from a thought, in itself known and not new at all, that took hold, turned into an emotion, which in turn knocked on habit and behavior’s door and unleashed my doing things that I knew were pointless but still had some kind of existential value: like drinking a glass of water when not thirsty. The feeling I nourished was one of terrible loneliness.
I tried to approach the dilemma in my own usual way. If the known territory was my feeling alone, then surely if I associated more with other people, everything would work out? Let every new acquaintance be a new experience? I tried, and soon felt that I failed. Just as with my beloved books, talking to another human being could be stimulating (provided you picked a good one, that is) for a while, but it was definitely not a new experience. This became even clearer for me when it came to women.
I started seeing prostitutes again, and enjoyed it as long as it lasted. But no matter how different these women were in-between themselves, the experience was exactly the same – and always better before and during than after. I even tried spending time with women of my own cultural resonance and social class, some of which I still knew and could contact. But to no avail. These women couldn’t hide from me what it was they essentially wanted: to ensnare me, make a father out of me, and use up my funds in their own fervent fight for matriarchal status. They were just greedy animals in my mind, no better or worse than males.
Out walking through a park I knew well, but on paths I hadn’t strolled on before, it dawned upon me that my options were quite limited. Either I made peace with myself and tried to overcome my obsession. Or I would logically have to experience the ultimate novelty of all life: death. As with most things, I had no strong feelings for anything really. Life just passed by. I felt indifferent as a more or less innocent bystander who liked watching both playing children among the flowers of summer, and the snow falling heavily on doom-laden cemeteries. Perhaps death wouldn’t be so bad, after all?
I sat down on a bench I was fairly sure I hadn’t sat on before. The air was chilly, more so than was usual for such a sunny, early autumn day. People hurried by, going places, doing things, each with a more or less defined goal, I assumed. I envied them. I envied them their mechanical behavior. I was sure they were filled with emotions and hopes too, but to me they were just reactive creatures locked into each other by causal impulses. How easy such a life must be!
I didn’t notice it at first, but after a couple of minutes on the bench, I could feel tears rolling down my cheeks. I breathed heavily. Cold tears on my warm cheeks. I grew weary that someone would see me. It wasn’t really a position I felt comfortable with at all. Then it just came over me: This was very much a new experience. Yes, that’s right. My sitting down and crying in public was definitely a new experience. So I just sat there. The tears were streaming down, I sobbed, and my mind was filled with vague, sad memories of loss and pain. It was like a dam bursting and I just gave in.
Some people passed by. As far as I could notice, they hurried by, uncomfortable at being so close to an adult man crying. I lost track of time but finally I seemed to have run out of tears. Drawing some deep breaths in that clear, cold air, I shook off my sadness. It was then that I noticed a small boy standing by my side, just a few yards away. ”Why are you crying?”, he asked me. He was about ten years old, with clear blue eyes. He held a stick or a small branch from a tree in his hand. ”I really don’t know…”, I replied. ”I guess because it’s new to me…” He just stared at me in amazement. ”What do you mean?”, he asked. I realized then that I didn’t know what I had meant. Or, rather, that words failed me. In a peculiar way, I wanted to explain to him but simply couldn’t. ”Don’t worry, I’m fine.”, I said to him and tried to force a smile. ”Why are you fine?”, he asked.
Then I noticed a woman approaching from behind the boy, obviously his mother. ”What are you doing? Don’t talk to strangers. I’ve told you this so many times… Come here, right now!”, she exclaimed aggressively and dragged him off. I could hear him ask his mother, ”Why? Why shouldn’t I…?”, but then they disappeared from sight and sound.
”Why?” The question stuck in my mind. Why anything? There was a refined beauty in the simplicity of that question. It appealed to me in my usual lofty, philosophical way of thinking. But the question also felt urgently relevant to me at that moment. Why had I cried? Why hadn’t I been able to express myself in front of the boy? Why had that brutal, insensitive woman just dragged him off like that? It was a mere single word, but also a question that I knew I had posed myself a long time ago.
I hurried home. The brisk walk cleared my mind further. As soon as I got home, I sat down on my couch and looked around. Why? Why? I realized that the mere utterance of the question was exactly what I’d been looking for. The posing of that question demanded a new experience, a new perspective each time. If one found oneself stuck, all one had to do was ask Why?, and thereby force a new definition, an answer based on a new perspective. Or, at least, a perspective better thought through.
Habit told me I should do something different that evening. But I counter-attacked and asked myself, ”Why?” I started laughing out loud. It really was a useful question, more so than any other. I cheerfully went out to eat at the restaurant that was closest to my home. The food tasted just fine, and nothing bad or terrifying happened. I was startled to find myself still caught in a superstitious train of thought, but overcame it as I remembered the boy’s voice again.
That night I dreamt about him. We were in the park again. His clear blue eyes were looking straight into mine. All sounds were muffled and the setting in the park was winter, cold and snowy. He still had the branch in his hand. Far away I could see his mother waving, screaming in muted sounds. The boy slowly and carefully attached the branch to the trunk of a big tree right beside us. The branch stuck. I just stared at him in amazement. ”Why? Why did you do that? How did you do that?”, I whispered to him. He just smiled back. The woman had disappeared and we could only hear the snow falling on the ground and on all the branches of that tree. ”They were your tears… Not mine…”, the boy whispered back. ”That’s why…”
