The act was committed (Excerpt)

Where were you? Again, it hits me like a blow to the head knocking me backward and unsettling my stomach. The work was done. The act was committed. In essence, Itself, at work and at play. My time is much too valuable for these kinds of pursuits. I fall into them much too easily. Am I always determined to suffer on this earth? Am I always bent on complaining about such inconveniences? I can’t make any accusations at this stage. I suppose I knew I didn’t want it anyway. Worthless and tragic as it is. I’m going to bed early tonight. I cannot stand the sight of other people. My sickness won’t allow it now. It flares up in my lungs and causes my dry throat to retch in pain. I hoped for a new beginning, some other side of happiness. Now that’s all gone. Such pain, such annihilation, the buildings were razed to the ground and now there’s nothing left. Life still exists of course, trying to create some semblance of a normal existence. Obeying ancient rituals to restore humanity to the scarred souls of the few survivors. The bandages aren’t ready to come off yet. The plaza is empty now. I wait for a sign and dismiss it as soon as it arrives. One cares not for such deterrence. Especially in the heart of one so young and capable of anything as yourself. As your work and its life. As it continues to breathe and reproduce within itself. My madness, my cyclical need for renewal. The unconscious debt of my forefathers. The sound of the radiator singing to my ears. I cannot listen anymore. I am called to attention. I am working. That in itself will set you free—won’t it? Where are the darkened halls, the dismantled corridors of time gone by? When will these disruptive changes occur? She waited and watched. Not making a sound. The plain and sketchy way her fingers gestured before my eyes. On days when I thought her mercy would be enough! The pleasure I took in seeing her alive and well—in my arms once again. Spotless and devoted. A chance for another conversation. We were lovers, let me make this clear, I don’t know what she saw in me but finally something connected. There is a new kind of life gestating already. I cannot sense it in this decayed state. The old wooden walls of the overly large room in which I rest free from photographs and other voices. The room is my own jailer. Its backwards comfort keeps me here on nights like this. The thin sheets of glass barely protect the broken hinges of the storm windows. They make a terribly loud rapping noise. It creates a perverse rhythm in my life. The street below is full of children coming home to play in the snow. They need neither the future nor any material possessions. They are consumed by the newness of the physical world. I shudder at them though! My mind has been plagued with its own inconsiderate thoughts and conclusions. I have never been able to see the beauty around me. What it unconsciously sets out to do is perhaps better than any reality I ever faced. I took a lover. I involved myself in the kind of noncommittal relationship that is so common nowadays. I have no need for pretense or equivocation now. History did not exist for Strindberg. He, like Corto Maltese, did not like the lifeline he’d been given, so he decided to cut his own. The force of the present and how much I have ignored it. I am not a kind, loving person at all, quite the contrary. I fight for my own existence every day of my life. Never charmed by pleasure or lust—always insisting on something more, something that isn’t right for one to feel at this age. Caught in the blue viscous liquid that is despondency.