Simmered Butter

[lanzandpine]

What was it about summer that made it so appealing? Was it the abundance of greenery, the longer nights, the warm air? Do we even need to know?

Tantalizing smells, coming from nowhere. Bugs fly around, and one of them landed on David. He didn't notice. David was taking a quick break on the bench, in the park, after having walked a good hour or so. Summer evenings seemed to be much more attractive than the usual droll. The expanding horizons of his mind were enveloped in a silence that was just as solitary as it was connected to everything else. Wind, air, grass, leaves. David looked up in the sky and found it beautiful.

No one knows of David in this state, and he believed that no one probably would. His classmates weren't here, his sister wasn't here, none were here, sitting by him, staring at the sky together with him. Yet he felt so in touch with life, that he felt suffocated by the oncoming beating of the human hearts around him. In touch, in touch, with life. Hello, goodbye, thank you, please.

Another bug landed on him. Something was holding out its arms towards David. Welcome, please take a seat, please feel comfortable, you are at home, you are with us, and we love you, we care for you, we are here for you, we need you here and we wouldn't be here without you, we are with you and we are so connected, hello, please, tea or coffee, cream or no, sugar how much. He felt the wind brush his hair and caress his hands. In touch with life.

David knew that he would remember this moment, but he wasn't sure what for. He was simply sitting around. Perhaps that is exactly why he had to remember it. The whips and cudgels were gone, and he was embraced. Beating of his heart, beating of humankind's heart, a constant, creeping pulse of the world. Eerie stasis, prolonged being, frozen.

He sighed. The air he breathed felt ever so delicious.

Loving life was such an intoxicating endeavour. Painful and pointless, sometimes not rewarding. Loving life was such an intoxicating endeavour. He drank from the fountain. Ghee of life. It was so Sisyphean to simply be here, but he was here, so strangely successfully, that it almost felt like an illusion. For now he's here. Intoxicated. Drunk. Pain for later.

David got up and continued his walk. He wanted to drink coffee.