Most days he worked so hard, not just at his job, but at keeping himself in a state of anxiety, checking to see what fresh outrage had occurred and what artificial outrages had caught fire all around it; what albums, books, and movies had been released and how he could at once collect them for to maintain a sense of his own identity and feel bad for not giving them enough time or attention; which people he needed to stay in contact with and how unrewarding that contact seemed to be, both for himself and, as far as he could see, for the others. When vacation came, freed from all that, he collapsed like a marionette with the strings cut. “Happy Holidays,” said someone. It was either his wife, his mother, a friend, or a stranger. He didn’t know. He only knew he didn’t have the energy to find out.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
No comments:
Post a Comment