On Olives and Sake

The agony of a lover, according to Roland Barthes, is the waiting.

“I have no sense of proportions.”

***

He’s trying to bring out a nonchalant attitude that he never mastered. He can’t help but feel the urgency of what’s in-front of him. Passion being tortured. He watches as it’s stabbed to death, without dying, yet with no hope of escaping either. Too much pain, too much bitterness. History? Too little or too much, he can’t make up his mind. He assumes a nonchalant face in revenge of her ineptitude. He assumes a cover of sanity to hide the inner psychosis.

***

Is she stupid? The answer inevitably comes back: the opposite has always been true. Then what is she? a master of manipulation? and what of him, then? is he the idiot? The psychosis grows. The discontent with feelings grows. Why the hell does he always drag himself to strange, foreign cities. He can’t even mourn properly here. He can’t celebrate his insanity nor mourn its passing.

***

If he can’t dream his way into this silence, then he wants to demolish it. He wants it to fall on him. To break this pathetic and comically childish sense of abandonment. He wants it to implode, and take all else with it.

***

He wants to walk a familiar street. He wants to escape into a familiar conversation. He can’t take it anymore. All these new people, they’re strangers in every sense. They’re so neutral, and their innocent indifference nauseates him. Why aren’t they all in awe of his agony. Why aren’t they silent and respectful. The abandonment settles back in, and little by little turns into aggressiveness. He despises them all. They’re not in love with her, they’re not waiting, and therefore, they could very well be happy. The idea enrages him.

***

Deception. A lover deceives himself, and everyone around him. Deception is how he survives. And in reverse, he accuses everyone of dishonesty. It’s his escape, and his entanglement. But only her dishonesty, even through her silence, breaks his soul. It discolors his hours.

***

“I am an amputee who still feels pain in his missing leg.”

He waits.