Would you say you think more or less than me about the, you know, general boorishness of life? Perhaps you don’t think about it at all : oh, I’m sorry, I just assumed you did, I just assume everybody does, that’s all. Good for you. That means : god, how amazing : that means you lead an untarnished and flawless life, though you’re not aware of it, of course, or on the whole not as aware as you should be. And that also means you’re heading for the clumsiest day of your entireness. That’s the day : I don’t even remember mine anymore, god, how long has it been? : that’s the day you leave home, as usual, wearing a grin, as you’ve ever done, you know, just in case, and there won’t be anything in the world : and I don’t mean just your street, or your neighbourhood, or even your city or your state, I do mean the world, in the full and vast entirety of both its faces : there will not be even one thing worth smiling at, or deserving, if you like : I find this wording far more befitting : deserving of the greatness of your smile. Then you’ll find that you’ve stopped grinning, even your eyes : the pureness of your eyes, and the depth : feel that it’d be rude if the glowed, and that’s when starting with the softness of your skin and ending with, if you allow me : do tell me if I’m out of order, I do tend to offend the people I love : the skinniness of your soul, you will die a little bit all over yourself, and it will hurt, it’ll be the first of your deaths and by far the most painful, I assure you, and it’ll be so overall lifewrecking and disorienting that from that day on even something as simple as the sketching of a smile will feel hard and unnatural, do believe me, it will feel like a fucking spasm, a muscular reflex fit for nothing, it’ll be like an habit emptied of reason, emptied of heart : that’s it, I’ve been avoiding the word heart because you even forget its meaning, you forget everything from life, or, at least, the simplest things, the things and the concepts that are actually of any use at all : you will feel empty because empty of a heart : can you imagine what that is, can you just think of a life without joy, fuck, a life without life? : and when you’ve been there it will be so difficult to smile again, so enormously hard and frightfully random, that if I sometimes smile it is because you still have a heart that I can borrow, and that I use, shamelessly, fearlessly, passionately, increasingly forgetful of the grey areas of being, and increasingly indebted to you. Only the good things in life can remind us of what far means. RC