There is little here to do, and, after a certain point, even less to think. I never considered that I might find myself in such a state, so exhausted, really, that I feel exsanguinated, not of blood but of thought. Boredom-I’d always thought, really, that I would treasure a period of unceasing emptiness, that I would easily fill it. But time, I’ve come to realize, is not for us to fill in such great, blank slabs: we speak of managing time, but it is the opposite-our lives are filled with busyness because those thin chinks of time are all we can truly master.
Why Everyone Is Quitting Their Job To Play Call of Duty
What, we wondered, would we grow up to become under such a woman? Why was she so incapable? We treated her like most boys would treat small animals: kindly when we were feeling happy and generous, cruelly when we were not.
And although I too enjoyed reading, I never loved the sport of language the way Owen did. This was because to me, language had no native intelligence of its own-it was created by man and was given meaning by man, and therefore clever writing often seemed to me little more than a Chinese puzzle box of contrivances. Writers are praised for having a facility with something manmade, something that can be changed or manipulated at will; but why is augmenting a manmade construction considered an act of brilliance? But perhaps I am not making sense here, so let me put it another way: language has no inherent secrets.
And yet my father, unambitious, placid, spectacularly unmotivated, somehow emerged utterly unharmed. I remember many nights sitting at our kitchen table, prickling with impatience for a father who would shout, berate me, beat me to do better, to work harder, whose ambitions for me would be greater than my own. Instead my father merely sat there, dreamily humming the latest popular song and rolling his cigarettes.
…
It makes me laugh a little now, my self righteous disapproval: I, of course, greatly benefited from my father’s continual dumb luck, but back then it seemed to me that he was doing Owen and me something of a disservice. Growing up in our home, you would have assumed that fortune fell from the sky with a reassuring thump and that nothing, not even the prospect of amassing a great fortune, was worth aspiring to. My father did not in fact accumulate his money out of any sense of capitalist zeal-no, if it happened, it did, and the few times he made poor business decisions, he didn’t seem to mind that either.
Despite my many complaints and annoyances, it occurs to me (and not for the first time) that my childhood, while often tedious, was certainly much simpler than my life today. This is, I suppose, as many people remember their childhoods. But back then, I do believe I was familiar with a state that was reasonably close to contentment. I was not funny looking, I was an adequately skilled athlete, I was rich but not extravagant, I was intelligent, I had interests, I was stronger and swifter than Owen. My schoolmates left me alone: I was never beaten or teased, I never needed friends or anyone else-after all, I had Owen.
But now I almost admire Owen’s indecisiveness; it was almost as if he, to make up for my singlemindedness, was trying to be of as many minds as possible. I was impatient then, of course, but now I can recall fondly my brother’s prickliness, his fierce idealism, his quickly burning passions. I remember Owen in those days as so vital, so indefatigable, so intellectually nimble in ways I was not. For such different minded people, we were unusually and energetically competitive, but still-there were times when we agreed too, and during those moments we could argue anyone out of anything, bend them with our ferocity and righteousness. At any rate, we could always match passions, even when our passions were not directed toward the same subjects.
But now I almost admire Owen’s indecisiveness; it was almost as if he, to make up for my singlemindedness, was trying to be of as many minds as possible. I was impatient then, of course, but now I can recall fondly my brother’s prickliness, his fierce idealism, his quickly burning passions. I remember Owen in those days as so vital, so indefatigable, so intellectually nimble in ways I was not. For such different minded people, we were unusually and energetically competitive, but still-there were times when we agreed too, and during those moments we could argue anyone out of anything, bend them with our ferocity and righteousness. At any rate, we could always match passions, even when our passions were not directed toward the same subjects.
Beautiful people make even those of us who proudly consider ourselves unmoved by another’s appearance dumb with admiration and fear and delight, and struck by the profound, enervating awareness of how inadequate we are, how nothing, not intelligence or education or money, can usurp or overpower or deny beauty.
Another long silence, which I would come to know meant that he was thinking carefully about what he would say-not because he was afraid that I’d misinterpret him, but because he was the sort of person who never spoke unless he was certain; he was not interested in speculation or theoreticals; he never said anything unless he knew it to be true. Which is not to say he was incurious, or arrogant, or sloppy, or that he never doubted, or rethought things dozens, hundreds of times-nothing of the sort. But he did his wondering, his imagining, in silence; to engage someone in his uncertainties was, I think he felt, presumptuous, and perhaps even rude.
The problem with being young and in a singular place is that one assumes that one will inevitably find oneself in an equally foreign and exotic location at some later point in life. But this is very rarely true. For most of what we see in our immediate surroundings is in fact replicated elsewhere in the world with a sort of dull exactness: birds, animals, fruits, sky, people. They may look different from place to place, but their fundamental behaviors are essentially identical: birds tweet and flap, animals prowl and bleat, fruits are insensate and inanimate, the sky fills and empties of clouds and stars, people wear clothes and kill and eat and die.
2022 kokkuvõte, CERN, üksi elamine
Yes, it was a crude sort of life, but there was a cozy sense of bounty here, of everything having its place, of every need of life-food, shelter, weaponry-being well considered and provided for, of life stripped to its essence and yet comfortably fulfilled. How many societies can say this, that they have recognized all they need and have made provisions for it all? Here there was food and a source of water and the tools of selfdefense, all of it not only available but of a surplus. This, I thought approvingly, was a place that had no needs, and therefore no wants.