My Alibis #7

"The conditions governing your life have been codified and set down in a little book, but no one has ever given you a copy, and when you have sought it in libraries, you are told that someone else has it on extended loan. Still, you are free to seek love to the best of your ability, or to wash your clothes in the machines that stand with their round doors temptingly open, or to buy something in one of the many shops in this area - a puppy perhaps.... Not that you are indifferent by nature - you want nothing so much as a deep-going, fundamental involvement - but this does not seem to happen.... Full of good will, you attempt to pretend that you do not feel this way, you attempt to keep the level of cheerfulness and hope approximately where it has always been, to keep alive a sense of 'future'. But no one is fooled."

--Donald Barthelme, 'Daumier'