thelasttrainstop

What we ourselves have done in a day and considered to be our daily victory. Above all else, we have not loved. We have dismissed what cannot be understood because we do not wish to appear foolish. We have accumulated things and certainties because we have neither the one nor the other. We have failed to experience any previously unrecorded joy. We have built cathedrals, but remained outside, fearing that any cathedrals we ourselves build might turn out to be traps. We have not given ourselves to ourselves because that would be the beginning of a long life possibly devoid of consolations. We have avoided falling on our knees before the first person who, out of love, utters the words 'your fear.' We have organized clubs of smiling terror, where they serve soda with every drink. We have tried to save ourselves, but without explicitly using the word “salvation” so as not to feel embarrassed by our own naiveté. We have avoided using the word “love” so as to avoid having to acknowledge how closely love and hate are interwoven. We have kept our death a secret. We have created art because we do not know what the alternative is. We have disguised our indifference with love, disguised our indifference with anxiety, disguised our greatest fear with a lesser fear. We have not worshipped because, just in time, we were sensibly mean-spirited enough to remember the existence of false gods. We have deliberately not behaved ingenuously in order not to have to laugh at ourselves and so that, at the end of the day, we can say 'well, at least I didn’t make a fool of myself,' and so spare ourselves shedding any tears before we turn out the light. We have enjoyed the certainty that we and, yes, you too, have done precisely the same, which is why we all, unknowingly, love each other. We have smiled in public at things we would not smile at when alone. We have called our candor weakness. We have, above all, felt afraid of each other. And we have considered all this to be our daily victory."