Je ne sais quoi

It’s hard to explain.

Try.

What if what I have to say offends you? So much of what I have to say now, even that which does not remotely concern you, you seem to find offensive.

I ask this of you knowingly.

A pause imbued with consideration.

To explain I would have to find the origin of my irritation, which is difficult given the shear depth of it.

That’s fine. I’m in no rush. I have a lot of time at my disposal and for better or worse you and your disposition seem to have taken up residence within my thoughts.

What you have decidedly called disposition is merely a matter of the way you choose to see things. And so be it. It is proving increasingly difficult to change the way anyone sees anything. We have all become so immovable in our ways.

Well, how do you choose to see things?

A second, longer pause.

I have no desire to participate.

I wish I had the first clue as to what you think we are all participating in.

This cross-examination of my being that you have decided to undertake. These constitutions for ‘living’ that the condemned have so neatly designed for us.

Do you mean responsibility?

What you have taken up as your responsibility is again a matter of the way you choose to see things. Did you yourself choose those things that you are so valiantly responsible for?

No. They were chosen for me. Just as they are for everyone else.

And did you ever question it?

Why would I have ever questioned it? This is just the way things are. I am a realist, Miles. My existence is not concerned with having my head wedged between clouds.

What if I do not like the way things are? What if my existence, and my choosing in not participating, are in themselves an act of rebellion towards the way things are? After all, they who want the world to remain as it is do not want it to remain at all. YOUR world is concerned only with progress for progress’s sake. You live in fierce alignment with break-evens and quotas. The essence of your being has become a list of objectives and a spreadsheet. The ticking of the clock is your master. There are no spare seconds for thought or for allowing yourself errors. This machine, it eats your youth and your spontaneity. It eats your dreams. You have all become so afraid of yourselves. What you might like if you were able to have things the way you would like them. You have begun to live only in ways that you perhaps think someone else would like you to. Unfortunately, the idea BORES ME.

Have you not considered that this may just be a matter of the way YOU choose to see things? That perhaps things are not so simple as you make them out to be? Everything is so polar to you. I’m either with you or I’m against you and anything halfway is counterfeit.

There are not enough hours in the day for halfway.

So, you’d like me to be a radical? Just like you? And what then. Even then you would find something about me to complain about. You’d perhaps be irritated by my uniformity. My likeness to you. Because God forbid anyone be compared to you Miles.

I like you where you are. Arm’s length.

So, you’ll be leaving again?

Why ask questions you already know answers to.

Does the running grow tiresome?

Running from a car crash.

Oh my. When did you become so insufferably righteous?

I’m tired of talking about this with you. Can we go to bed now?

Muffles.

Alone, together.

So be it.

You’re a louse.

What is a louse?

Written by Luke Neillis

A segment of dialogue from his up and coming book "Chasing moths and sorting out the mess in your head"