Today, I worked at the office. After a morning spent in never-ending meetings, lunchtime came rightly as a savior. But there was some place I wanted to visit before eating lunch, so I left the office building. The distance to my destination was a 15-minute-long walk under the rain to the warping gate, followed by 10 seconds of warping time. My office was located at the capital of the United States of Europe, Bruxelles since President Christian Zhu unified disaggregated countries into one single superpower. After I arrived in front of the nearest warping gate, I told the machine my destination and it proceeded to check my identity by sending a query to the chip inside my head: “Take me to Mountainside Lake.” I paid 15 crypto-euros and then walked into the gate from which a neon-blue fluid emanated.

Laying on the sofa watching series

Watching series has become an ordinary activity shared by all social groups in the modern society. Poor and rich people alike all share the same hobbies. There is little difference in their cultural backgrounds. I imagine that, a few decades ago, wealthy members of society used to have different occupations from poorer ones. Beware, I don’t mean that I would want to go back to the past and have the poor illiterate and living in terrible conditions. What I mean by that is, for instance, the rich would read lots of books - got to the theatre, the opera, and open their minds. Whereas the destitute would hardly ever read, if they could read at all!

I’ve always wondered what it felt to be that one guy: the popular one. The one guy who was always at the center of everything. The one guy who was surrounded by his crew, always laughing and governing as the highest caste the society. I’ve never been anything than more than a a discrete and transparent person ever since I’ve been a child. Now that I’m over 60 years old this year, I’ve come to question this envy I felt as a child and still felt during a large part of my life. But there is a probability that my line of thought adapted to my being a spectator rather than an actor, I might have needed to find excuses for being weak.

People don’t talk to each other, they merely speak at each other. I am not entirely sure if people have ever talked to each others, but I’ve recently noticed how difficult it was to have a meaningful conversation with anybody. Conversations all seem vacuous and express nothing but false pretenses. How can our society move forward at a time when all discussions turn to hysterical clashes where everybody tries to shoot the adversary down with shameless lies and ridiculous entitlements?

The world we live in is a world that has given up hope. The general mood has become constantly darker over time these past few years. Strong values such as friendship, family, and duty have all lost their meanings in today’s society where individuality has taken over mutual help and concern for the others. There is no such thing as home anymore. Families have been disintegrated as conflicts between newer and older generations break out, threatening the very foundations that our societies are based on.

The anticipation

I’ve recently been reading the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther written by Goethe in the XVIII th century. What’s interesting to know is that the story is directly based on the author’s own experience, it was written shortly after the events described in the novel. The novel is a series of letters which the narrator sends to a mysterious friend. The friend’s replies remain unknown throughout the whole story.

Some mornings, I wake up standing there, always in the same place deep in this luminescent forest. This has been happening every now and then ever since the end of summer, or rather the beginning of fall. The memories of the dreams I make before waking up in the middle of iridescent trees fade away as soon as I open my eyes. As I try to hold onto the evanescent memories of what felt like regretful dreams, all that remains is but a sense of profound loss.

Recently I watched the movie “Never Let Me Go” directed by Mark Romanek, starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Nightley. I don’t remember why I chose this movie specifically. Maybe it was because it was suggested on the recommendation bar of a certain website. I already new the outline of the movie before watching for two reasons. First, the movie was adapted from the famous eponym novel from Kazuo Ishiguro (who later was awarded the nobel prize of literature). Though I did not read the book, I had already heard of it on radio program that dealt with philosphical analyses. The second reason why I already knew of the outline of the movie was because I had read “The Promised Neverland” which is a manga that freely adapts Ishiguro’s work.