The Booth

“Nice to see you again. What’s on your mind?”

“The weeks feel like hours. Hours of searching in mathematical and existential realms, interspersed with little moments of joy when I remember to pay closer attention. Music and line breaks and the rare sentence still give me pause, though they seem rarer in occasion. My eyesight has gone to hell, and my fingers no longer serve me. What happened to the remainder of the weeks? Surely there was more. I’m losing my mind here.”

“Say more.”

“This is what it feels like to get older. A constant yearning for the past, for comfort in nostalgia and reminiscences, for something akin to meaning amidst the moving mirage of memory. The idea of God is suddenly appealing to me despite my lifelong aversion to authoritarian absolutes, another sign of mental decay. Perhaps what I really want is the community on offer.”

“Do you want an escape?”

“No. On the contrary, I want to be engaged. But it feels like there is less of that to look forward to. I’ve look forward all my life, and now there is only darkness. My friends are dead, my wife is gone, and the kids don’t visit anymore. Some poor lady has to wipe my ass every time I take a shit.”

“Bet that feels nice,” she smirks.

“Sure, if I could still feel down there. She’s the one having all the fun, and I’m left sitting like a dunce.”

“At least she’s kind.”

“Funny isn’t it? People can spend their entire lives working towards every imaginable thing except for the thing that they really want. They delude and submit themselves into liking things they don’t like, into doing things that crush their soul. Just look at the rampant alcohol consumption and the various degrees of escapism. People want to forget about their lives, not live it. And before they know it they’re on their deathbeds searching for lost time.”

“Is that true for you? And that’s great novel, Searching for Lost Time.”

“I don’t think so. I mean, my work has really made an impact. I’ve been in love and had great loves from poetry and music to philosophy and mathematics. And no offense, but Proust just isn’t my kind of guy. The sentences – too long and flowery.”

“It’s my job not to be offended.”

“So what do I do? I can’t go back to work, I can’t bring the dead back to life, I can’t even wipe my ass.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“What. Do. You. Want?”

“What’s the point if there isn’t any future to look forward to? There is so little time.”

“Maybe the trick is to stop counting.”

“That’s a lifetime of therapy honey, and I ain’t got much of that left.”

“Well, there is this. What do you want, right now? Tell me the first thing that pops into your head.”

“Sigh. I want to get drunk with the holiest priest in the country so that he will admit to his various affairs.”

“Go on.”

“I want to throw the craziest party known to man within cathedral walls.”

“Invite me.”

“I want to kneel before the pulpit every day, not to worship or beg for anyone’s forgiveness – there will be plenty of time for that later – but to create opportunities for the girl behind the piano to flash me a look. A look of possibility. A look of imagination. A shy invitation. A revitalizing desire.

I want her to take me to that place she goes when she is playing from the heart. To the masses it’s just background noise, gifted fingers at work maybe. But to me, it’s love.”

“You want love.”

“That depends. What do you mean by love?”

“Proust had a good answer. Maybe start there.”

“I’m a philosopher, not an English professor.”

“Philosophy is everywhere, isn’t it?”

“I’m tired of thinking.”

“Don’t think then. Look, and listen. Proust had a lot to show. If not him, this. Because there is still this.”