If a man were to sit—say, at a sidewalk café—and, in watching the myriad people passing him by, were to, for each one of them, construct a story, or a history or perhaps a mythology in which he detailed and examined every trivium, every minute turn of their lives and every single inconsequential moment of every single inconsequential day in that person's entire existence from the day he was born to the day he dies, and all this based on the most perfunctory of glances from across the street, would he, in this almost godlike act of creation of a character, become so suffused with this semifictional person that he himself might begin to adopt their attributes; or would he rather find himself so hopelessly enamoured with the almost romantic pathos of a life lived with neither import nor influence that he might begin to find the most mundane of trivia to be among the most important facets of all human existence? These are not questions I ask myself on a regular basis, I assure you. Today, however, I am bored, and I am sitting at a sidewalk café watching people pass me by, and I cannot help but wonder about these things, about if a man really could become infatuated with his own creation, and about the lives of the people on the street: could I become infatuated with one—or perhaps more—of them; are they themselves preoccupied with a certain person, fictional or not; or is it far more likely that they are each simply forming a part of a larger organism that winds it way, antlike, through the stream of time, within which I am nothing but a single ant who has paused for a moment to take his breath? I would think it to be somewhat presumptuous of me to assume that I am not a part of the human mechanism, to assume that I am but an external observer, and thus not a cogtooth in clockwork. Although, it is an attractive position to be in, this external observer: as one would not have to obey the rules of the machine, one could perceive everything with perfect amorality, lending to his observations a truth and clarity that would otherwise be obscured by the twin subjectivities of empathy and ethic. I would indeed prefer to read the time from the clockface than to be inside the mechanism toiling to turn the hands.
In smoothing out my frayed corduroy slacks over my legs (I always like to be well-dressed and present the appearance of a gentleman, but I never can quite shake my natural predisposition towards a certain roughness around the edges), I notice a small, sun-shaped stain on my left thigh. I lick my thumb and try to rub it off, but it persists. I must have spilled a drop of my coffee on it without noticing: such things have been known to happen, given my tendency to overlook the smaller things in favour of contemplating the so-called bigger picture. I rub the stain again, but it does not fade. I decide that such things are not worth worrying about. Perhaps someone will see me, and see the stain on my leg, and for the rest of the day—perhaps for the rest of their lives—I will be “that man with the coffee stain on his trousers” to that one person. Perhaps they will become obsessed with me, wondering why I have a coffee stain on my trousers, wondering if I am too poor to afford to clean my trousers, or if I am careless, or if I simply did not notice. I could become a source of fascination to a single person, as indeed a single person could become a source of fascination to me. I wonder if people who are like me—ponderous men who sit in coffee shops and watch the world go by—have ever taken my image and constructed a character around me, and if so, how close were they to my true character, how close to my true history was their invented one? That leads me to wonder how close my inventions are to the truth. Of course, there is always an element of truth to even the most fantastical of fictions: if there weren't, they wouldn't be worth reading. Sometimes I would like to know the real story of a person I see, but sometimes I think that my stories are the real stories. My stories are at least more real to me than anyone else's real stories, since my stories are the only ones I know.
There is a woman across the street: a tall woman, almost good-looking, except for a haggardness, a fraying round the face that makes her look older than I believe she is, more worn-out than she should be. She carries a bag of groceries, and a pack of disposable diapers under her arm. I believe she may have a child, a young child. Maybe this child is the source of her roughness. She hasn't slept a full night in weeks, and it shows in her face and around her eyes. The child's father is absent. He left her shortly before the child was born, unable to deal with the responsibility. The woman is waiting to cross the street. She is almost out of view. I decide to follow her. I stand from my table, forgetting to pay for my coffee. It does not matter: I do not intend to return here anyway, their coffee being so harsh and unpalatable. The woman crosses the street. I turn the corner and come into view of her once more. I see a small bald patch on the crown of her head. She limps almost imperceptibly. She had complications in her child's birth, you see, which left her slightly lame. She passes a beggar on the street, and drops a coin into his cup. She is a compassionate woman, then. This instinct is no doubt borne from her motherhood, that innate need to look after the helpless and less fortunate. This poor woman! How she must suffer, how she must struggle to keep her child warm and fed, and yet she has time to help those in need. Such magnanimity of spirit is unprecedented. This woman should be rewarded for her philanthropy, for her love of all life and for her unselfish acts. This woman stands as an example of the paragon of human virtue. She rounds a corner into an alleyway, and climbs the steps of a townhouse, her townhouse, in which her down-and-out sister—whom she has taken in out of the kindness of her heart—is looking after the child. She turns her key in the lock and enters the building, the door closing with a thud behind her. She climbs the staircase to the flat on the top floor of the tall, redbricked building and enters her humble home. The child is asleep, and the sister sits at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette and thumbing through a magazine. The woman asks after the baby's wellbeing, and the sister assures her that all is well. A short row ensues, over the fact that the sister is still unemployed, but the woman relents and agrees that it is difficult to find a job at the moment, and that she attained her position in a bakery by sheer luck. She agrees that her sister can stay with her for a while longer. She goes to check on her sleeping child. From the street below, I see her draw the curtains in the front window.
A short time later, a man in a hat calls to the door of the house. The woman opens it and lets him in. The father of her child, come to see his offspring? Perhaps I was wrong: perhaps he has not shied away from the responsibilities of fatherhood, but simply chooses not to live with the mother of his child. A short time later, after they have spoken of the child, and briefly of their own lives, and after they have taken tea and biscuits, and after the terse exchange of pleasantries between the father and the sister—who do not get along so well—the father leaves. The woman does not accompany him to the front door. He almost trips down the stairs as he fixes his hat, missing a step in the twilight gloom.
The woman emerges shortly afterward and sits on the stoop smoking a cigarette. It is a cold night, and she is not dressed very warmly. Her skirt is short, and her legs uncovered. Perhaps she is going out tonight? She will meet up with some friends and they will sit in a dirty bar drinking pints of cheap beer, talking about their lives. It is her rare chance to escape the bonds of motherhood. It is her reward for her unsparing philanthropy; her opportunity to do something for herself for once. She's been sitting there for a while now. Perhaps she is waiting for a lift that has been delayed. Her friends telephoned not long ago to say that they would collect her and bring her into the town, but they have been unavoidably detained and now she must wait for them on the stoop of her townhouse. The poor woman. I approach her and offer her my jacket. I do not mind that we may strike up a conversation and that I may discover details of her life that are not concurrent with my details of her life. I do not mind that maybe she is not as philanthropic and selfless as I had believed. I do not mind if maybe that man was not her child's father. I do mind the sight of a woman sitting in a short dress on a cold step in spring. She accepts my jacket and thanks me. She asks me if I would like to accompany her upstairs. I accept.
We enter her small, draughty flat. She hangs my coat on a rack, directs me to the bathroom and—curiously—the bedroom. She leaves the room. I look around: there is no sign of a child. So I was wrong on that count. But why then would she have bought those diapers? I see the pack on the kitchen floor, opened and with several missing from it. I am puzzled. She asks me if fifty pounds is alright and I understand immediately that I was wrong about everything. It occurs to me now that it is entirely possible to replace somebody's life almost completely with a fabrication of one's own: and in those circumstances the fiction can be truer and certainly more easily palatable than the reality. My own fictions present only my view of the world, and my view of the world is the only truth I can in good conscience subscribe to, given that every man has his own subjective truth, and none of them can—nor should be expected to—fit neatly, to tesselate with my life and my experiences. I realise that only I could have invented this particular life for this woman, only I with my peculiar outlook shaped by my particular life and my unique set of experiences and circumstances could have built this particular world around this particular individual, while ignoring or—in fact—misinterpreting all the physical evidence and obvious clues to point out the reality. Perhaps now I have in truth achieved that separation from humanity that I so desired, perhaps now I am indeed outside the clockwork, outside the fabric of society. It seems to me that only a man who is perfectly detached from everything around him can conceive of an entire life for a person, for those within the clockwork would see how a person fits, but one outside the clock, looking at the face, has no idea what each cog does, only that they all work in unison and in harmony.
Now: an experiment. Would a clock still run if it were missing one of its more insignificant cogs? What if the person outside the clock were to replace one of its cogs with one of his own design? Would the clock still run? And what if I were to replace an entire person in reality with one of my own design? What if this woman's life were not the life she had, but the one I prescribed for her? I decide that I shall test this out. She shall cease to exist as she is, and be recreated in my image. Her life in reality shall end, and the only life she shall have will be the one written in these pages. It is true, then: it is possible to become obsessed with the invented life of a person one sees on the street. However, I decide to break my obsession with her now, at this moment, at the end of her story, and at the beginning of mine. I decide that the details of her life are too inconsequential for me to trouble myself with, and I do away with them. I leave her flat and as I exit through the front door and descend the steps to the street, I wonder if I have gone too far, if I have grown too far outside of human society to even understand it anymore; I have lost track of the details, and so the bigger picture has grown fuzzy. I no longer have to obey the rules of the machine, and so I have forgotten what the rules of the machine are. I have become the perfect external observer, the perfect amoral witness. I am above, and I am outside. I wonder if anyone today knows me simply as “that man with the coffee stain on his trousers”.
In smoothing out my frayed corduroy slacks over my legs (I always like to be well-dressed and present the appearance of a gentleman, but I never can quite shake my natural predisposition towards a certain roughness around the edges), I notice a small, sun-shaped stain on my left thigh. I lick my thumb and try to rub it off, but it persists. I must have spilled a drop of my coffee on it without noticing: such things have been known to happen, given my tendency to overlook the smaller things in favour of contemplating the so-called bigger picture. I rub the stain again, but it does not fade. I decide that such things are not worth worrying about. Perhaps someone will see me, and see the stain on my leg, and for the rest of the day—perhaps for the rest of their lives—I will be “that man with the coffee stain on his trousers” to that one person. Perhaps they will become obsessed with me, wondering why I have a coffee stain on my trousers, wondering if I am too poor to afford to clean my trousers, or if I am careless, or if I simply did not notice. I could become a source of fascination to a single person, as indeed a single person could become a source of fascination to me. I wonder if people who are like me—ponderous men who sit in coffee shops and watch the world go by—have ever taken my image and constructed a character around me, and if so, how close were they to my true character, how close to my true history was their invented one? That leads me to wonder how close my inventions are to the truth. Of course, there is always an element of truth to even the most fantastical of fictions: if there weren't, they wouldn't be worth reading. Sometimes I would like to know the real story of a person I see, but sometimes I think that my stories are the real stories. My stories are at least more real to me than anyone else's real stories, since my stories are the only ones I know.
There is a woman across the street: a tall woman, almost good-looking, except for a haggardness, a fraying round the face that makes her look older than I believe she is, more worn-out than she should be. She carries a bag of groceries, and a pack of disposable diapers under her arm. I believe she may have a child, a young child. Maybe this child is the source of her roughness. She hasn't slept a full night in weeks, and it shows in her face and around her eyes. The child's father is absent. He left her shortly before the child was born, unable to deal with the responsibility. The woman is waiting to cross the street. She is almost out of view. I decide to follow her. I stand from my table, forgetting to pay for my coffee. It does not matter: I do not intend to return here anyway, their coffee being so harsh and unpalatable. The woman crosses the street. I turn the corner and come into view of her once more. I see a small bald patch on the crown of her head. She limps almost imperceptibly. She had complications in her child's birth, you see, which left her slightly lame. She passes a beggar on the street, and drops a coin into his cup. She is a compassionate woman, then. This instinct is no doubt borne from her motherhood, that innate need to look after the helpless and less fortunate. This poor woman! How she must suffer, how she must struggle to keep her child warm and fed, and yet she has time to help those in need. Such magnanimity of spirit is unprecedented. This woman should be rewarded for her philanthropy, for her love of all life and for her unselfish acts. This woman stands as an example of the paragon of human virtue. She rounds a corner into an alleyway, and climbs the steps of a townhouse, her townhouse, in which her down-and-out sister—whom she has taken in out of the kindness of her heart—is looking after the child. She turns her key in the lock and enters the building, the door closing with a thud behind her. She climbs the staircase to the flat on the top floor of the tall, redbricked building and enters her humble home. The child is asleep, and the sister sits at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette and thumbing through a magazine. The woman asks after the baby's wellbeing, and the sister assures her that all is well. A short row ensues, over the fact that the sister is still unemployed, but the woman relents and agrees that it is difficult to find a job at the moment, and that she attained her position in a bakery by sheer luck. She agrees that her sister can stay with her for a while longer. She goes to check on her sleeping child. From the street below, I see her draw the curtains in the front window.
A short time later, a man in a hat calls to the door of the house. The woman opens it and lets him in. The father of her child, come to see his offspring? Perhaps I was wrong: perhaps he has not shied away from the responsibilities of fatherhood, but simply chooses not to live with the mother of his child. A short time later, after they have spoken of the child, and briefly of their own lives, and after they have taken tea and biscuits, and after the terse exchange of pleasantries between the father and the sister—who do not get along so well—the father leaves. The woman does not accompany him to the front door. He almost trips down the stairs as he fixes his hat, missing a step in the twilight gloom.
The woman emerges shortly afterward and sits on the stoop smoking a cigarette. It is a cold night, and she is not dressed very warmly. Her skirt is short, and her legs uncovered. Perhaps she is going out tonight? She will meet up with some friends and they will sit in a dirty bar drinking pints of cheap beer, talking about their lives. It is her rare chance to escape the bonds of motherhood. It is her reward for her unsparing philanthropy; her opportunity to do something for herself for once. She's been sitting there for a while now. Perhaps she is waiting for a lift that has been delayed. Her friends telephoned not long ago to say that they would collect her and bring her into the town, but they have been unavoidably detained and now she must wait for them on the stoop of her townhouse. The poor woman. I approach her and offer her my jacket. I do not mind that we may strike up a conversation and that I may discover details of her life that are not concurrent with my details of her life. I do not mind that maybe she is not as philanthropic and selfless as I had believed. I do not mind if maybe that man was not her child's father. I do mind the sight of a woman sitting in a short dress on a cold step in spring. She accepts my jacket and thanks me. She asks me if I would like to accompany her upstairs. I accept.
We enter her small, draughty flat. She hangs my coat on a rack, directs me to the bathroom and—curiously—the bedroom. She leaves the room. I look around: there is no sign of a child. So I was wrong on that count. But why then would she have bought those diapers? I see the pack on the kitchen floor, opened and with several missing from it. I am puzzled. She asks me if fifty pounds is alright and I understand immediately that I was wrong about everything. It occurs to me now that it is entirely possible to replace somebody's life almost completely with a fabrication of one's own: and in those circumstances the fiction can be truer and certainly more easily palatable than the reality. My own fictions present only my view of the world, and my view of the world is the only truth I can in good conscience subscribe to, given that every man has his own subjective truth, and none of them can—nor should be expected to—fit neatly, to tesselate with my life and my experiences. I realise that only I could have invented this particular life for this woman, only I with my peculiar outlook shaped by my particular life and my unique set of experiences and circumstances could have built this particular world around this particular individual, while ignoring or—in fact—misinterpreting all the physical evidence and obvious clues to point out the reality. Perhaps now I have in truth achieved that separation from humanity that I so desired, perhaps now I am indeed outside the clockwork, outside the fabric of society. It seems to me that only a man who is perfectly detached from everything around him can conceive of an entire life for a person, for those within the clockwork would see how a person fits, but one outside the clock, looking at the face, has no idea what each cog does, only that they all work in unison and in harmony.
Now: an experiment. Would a clock still run if it were missing one of its more insignificant cogs? What if the person outside the clock were to replace one of its cogs with one of his own design? Would the clock still run? And what if I were to replace an entire person in reality with one of my own design? What if this woman's life were not the life she had, but the one I prescribed for her? I decide that I shall test this out. She shall cease to exist as she is, and be recreated in my image. Her life in reality shall end, and the only life she shall have will be the one written in these pages. It is true, then: it is possible to become obsessed with the invented life of a person one sees on the street. However, I decide to break my obsession with her now, at this moment, at the end of her story, and at the beginning of mine. I decide that the details of her life are too inconsequential for me to trouble myself with, and I do away with them. I leave her flat and as I exit through the front door and descend the steps to the street, I wonder if I have gone too far, if I have grown too far outside of human society to even understand it anymore; I have lost track of the details, and so the bigger picture has grown fuzzy. I no longer have to obey the rules of the machine, and so I have forgotten what the rules of the machine are. I have become the perfect external observer, the perfect amoral witness. I am above, and I am outside. I wonder if anyone today knows me simply as “that man with the coffee stain on his trousers”.
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