control (microfiction)

04.10.2025

‘You don’t have any self-control’. Alfonso commented.

‘On the contrary, I have the most in the world.’ I responded. He was always accusing me of something or the other. Everyone was always accusing me of something. That was all that I was to them. Someone to accuse. Well, I accused in my turn. I accused them.

‘In what way?’ Alfonso asked incredulously. ‘You have fallen in love with women that are not even your type just because of close proximity to them. Several times.’

‘Have you not read Proust’s magnum opus?’ I asked. ‘That is how they get you. Through the proximity. You are assured that you are safe. You are not.’

‘So how do you have any self-control?’

‘Because even though I loved them, I did not even touch them.’

‘That is not your self-control,’ Alfonso sneered at me. ‘They did not let you touch them.’

‘You should be around beauty all day and not get a taste of it,’ I said to him. ‘Then judge me.’

Alfonso snorted. ‘Let us chisel past that front. What original thoughts did you have today?’

‘There is an author who has written a new book about how we know what everyone knows, how common sense is created. It is the mark of a philistine and a mediocre Western mind that this book was written. Because their conceit is to always talk about a positive form of knowledge when it is not knowledge at all. Socrates knew that. Here, common knowledge. What everyone knows. In fact, common knowledge is just a form of ignorance. It is what the fool knows. The wise man is the one that knows. What is common knowledge? That you should pour wealth on yourself like excrement to be considered attractive and influential? That education is worthless? That hate sells? Why do you think that living piece of shit Trump and that specimen of rancid ear wax Farage are in the ascendency? Because they know what the scum think. And what the scum thinks is ignorance, lies and stupidity. That is all that they can accept. Not love, truth or justice.’

‘You are full of hate,’ Alfonso commented. ‘Even more hate than they are.’

‘This poison that is in me,’ I said. ‘It will kill the evil in this world.’

‘You will choke on it,’ Alfonso said. ‘You are the only one that will be hurt by it. Come, forget this. Something else.’

‘How about this for a thought? What is this garbage?’

‘What do you mean? Alfonso looked at me keenly.

‘This life. It is garbage. What is this garbage? Even religious people want to escape this life. The Hindu wants to escape the cycle of rebirth and reincarnation. The Christian, the Muslim and the Jew want to go to heaven. They want to die rather than to live.’

Alfonso shook his head at me. So what? It was the truth. Nobody wanted to live here. Look at this fucking garbage that they had made. Alfonso was asking me about original thoughts I was having in this fucking garbage. The stench of it was making me sick. The sight of its ugliness was denting my mind and my eyes. Its extent was polluting the whole of society. And Alfonso wanted an original thought from me that wasn’t cynical and jaded, weary of this fucking garbage. All there was was this fucking garbage. And when you pointed out the garbage, nobody listened and they tried to attack you. That was the triumph of the garbage.