Mr. Joyfellow felt 73.674 years old exactly to the third decimal place. Although he sometimes hated this number to the nearest tenth, today he hated it down to the thousandth, and would have even if the thousandth's place were zero.
Disgusted by the necessary cliché of waking, he shuffled off to the kitchen as his stomach requested of him (rather impolitely, he thought). He had once been a man of regularity to the point of eccentricity, but that was less a trait of himself than of the past, and this past felt like the furthest of yesterdays, further even than the day before it.
Into the throat of today the hallway took him: a whole but meager morsel of regrettable meat to be swallowed down the stairs one step at a time. As he descended, the …show more content…
They, too, would just die in his care. Moreover, he was afraid that watching them die would encourage his body to do the same, and he wanted no inspiration to surrender in that way. As a matter of principle he resisted the option. But this was really to pit a rule against a fact: both have teeth, but only one bites, like the difference between traffic lights and death. The indifference of both is another matter entirely.
It was precisely then, in a phantom motion, that he saw the thing, at once everyday and ultimate. It was a large potted plant in an island display of leisure goods, caught in a faint beam of sunlight cast from a window far above.
The man dared to look more closely: it was not for sale, but everything around it was. Untouchable amidst the thick of commodity. An island within its own island, the store its forest, its sun that single beam, the distant ceiling its only sky. Images such as this one made Mr. Joyfellow feel with a renewed crispness that loneliness was surely preferable to nothingness.
And most unlike the wall of bouquets, this specimen seemed to be so vividly alive as to make death seem fictional, like an idea sifted from the vague urgencies which confuse a mind on the brink of sleep. It was the return of the burning bush, but this time it refused to
Disgusted by the necessary cliché of waking, he shuffled off to the kitchen as his stomach requested of him (rather impolitely, he thought). He had once been a man of regularity to the point of eccentricity, but that was less a trait of himself than of the past, and this past felt like the furthest of yesterdays, further even than the day before it.
Into the throat of today the hallway took him: a whole but meager morsel of regrettable meat to be swallowed down the stairs one step at a time. As he descended, the …show more content…
They, too, would just die in his care. Moreover, he was afraid that watching them die would encourage his body to do the same, and he wanted no inspiration to surrender in that way. As a matter of principle he resisted the option. But this was really to pit a rule against a fact: both have teeth, but only one bites, like the difference between traffic lights and death. The indifference of both is another matter entirely.
It was precisely then, in a phantom motion, that he saw the thing, at once everyday and ultimate. It was a large potted plant in an island display of leisure goods, caught in a faint beam of sunlight cast from a window far above.
The man dared to look more closely: it was not for sale, but everything around it was. Untouchable amidst the thick of commodity. An island within its own island, the store its forest, its sun that single beam, the distant ceiling its only sky. Images such as this one made Mr. Joyfellow feel with a renewed crispness that loneliness was surely preferable to nothingness.
And most unlike the wall of bouquets, this specimen seemed to be so vividly alive as to make death seem fictional, like an idea sifted from the vague urgencies which confuse a mind on the brink of sleep. It was the return of the burning bush, but this time it refused to