The grey had lasted for about one year. The sun did not exist in that forgotten land for that long time. He was sure he had seen the sun for a few hours at some point in that never-ending winter. A perennial grey was stifling his mind, like in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant. As he remembered.
That greyness was certainly not an impediment to remembering, like the fog in Ishiguro's book, but to living, yes, it was, indeed.
That greyness was a shame, a degradation. It brazenly slammed the misery of human life in his face every morning he got up.
He was looking for relief from that squalor. But how could it have been?
He had always the same word in mind, day by day. And it was "heart".
The heart? Following the heart? He concluded that yes, that was what he had to do.
And so he used to stand up and wait for that voice to say: "Do this, now". While the early scarce dawn light was leaking in through the big window of the bedroom.
Actually, it wasn't a voice, it was a kind of illumination that was coming in his flesh. The blackness he had inside thinned out, and the image of what he should have to do lit up. And he did what was in his insight. No hurry, though.
He was committing himself to not being in a hurry. And it was essential. Haste would have changed everything. It would have ruined the inner voice. Which he was trying to avoid.
And he was in no hurry. At any time.
He looked, as usual, at the weather forecast. He had many times noticed how in that country even the weather forecasts were artfully constructed to make the expectations of human misery even stronger. Those forecasts weren't true, in other words. They were knowingly built.
If he consulted three weather forecasting programs, they were all different, preventing the truth about what the day's weather would really be like.
That morning the day's forecasts were saying at six in the afternoon there would be the sun in the sky.
"What the hell is the sun for at six in the afternoon!" he exclaimed. "One needs the sun in the morning when one gets up. For one's mood. To feel less the desperation of living."
But those forecasts almost demoniacally used to show the sun late in the evening. Or the serene, at night.
He felt a piercing pain in the centre of his legs. He felt like needing sex but in a vulgar way. In a dirty way. He felt so horny. Like ten years before.
"What a strange feeling," he told himself.
But he realized that feeling was only a shield. Just a protection against that despair.
A way to escape the imminent madness. One way to slow it down.
Another remedy, after all. Like the heart. But only a little lower. That gave a strong injection of adrenaline.
He had lived too much on the spiritual side in recent years. And man does not live by spirit alone. "I am flesh, too, unfortunately," he concluded. He was grabbed by that sentiment, even if he preferred to deny it because it was just another way to become miserable to the spirit, to the soul.
That weather, in fact, artfully built, was demonic, it had something of a satanic torment that intended to humiliate those who lived under the longing of an ever-missing sun.
That greyness was certainly not an impediment to remembering, like the fog in Ishiguro's book, but to living, yes, it was, indeed.
That greyness was a shame, a degradation. It brazenly slammed the misery of human life in his face every morning he got up.
He was looking for relief from that squalor. But how could it have been?
He had always the same word in mind, day by day. And it was "heart".
The heart? Following the heart? He concluded that yes, that was what he had to do.
And so he used to stand up and wait for that voice to say: "Do this, now". While the early scarce dawn light was leaking in through the big window of the bedroom.
Actually, it wasn't a voice, it was a kind of illumination that was coming in his flesh. The blackness he had inside thinned out, and the image of what he should have to do lit up. And he did what was in his insight. No hurry, though.
He was committing himself to not being in a hurry. And it was essential. Haste would have changed everything. It would have ruined the inner voice. Which he was trying to avoid.
And he was in no hurry. At any time.
He looked, as usual, at the weather forecast. He had many times noticed how in that country even the weather forecasts were artfully constructed to make the expectations of human misery even stronger. Those forecasts weren't true, in other words. They were knowingly built.
If he consulted three weather forecasting programs, they were all different, preventing the truth about what the day's weather would really be like.
That morning the day's forecasts were saying at six in the afternoon there would be the sun in the sky.
"What the hell is the sun for at six in the afternoon!" he exclaimed. "One needs the sun in the morning when one gets up. For one's mood. To feel less the desperation of living."
But those forecasts almost demoniacally used to show the sun late in the evening. Or the serene, at night.
He felt a piercing pain in the centre of his legs. He felt like needing sex but in a vulgar way. In a dirty way. He felt so horny. Like ten years before.
"What a strange feeling," he told himself.
But he realized that feeling was only a shield. Just a protection against that despair.
A way to escape the imminent madness. One way to slow it down.
Another remedy, after all. Like the heart. But only a little lower. That gave a strong injection of adrenaline.
He had lived too much on the spiritual side in recent years. And man does not live by spirit alone. "I am flesh, too, unfortunately," he concluded. He was grabbed by that sentiment, even if he preferred to deny it because it was just another way to become miserable to the spirit, to the soul.
That weather, in fact, artfully built, was demonic, it had something of a satanic torment that intended to humiliate those who lived under the longing of an ever-missing sun.
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