– because it’s also ourselves we’re brutalising, though in another way, of course. No one wants to live like this. Or at least, I don’t want to live like this. I want to live differently, or if necessary to die so that other people can one day live differently. But looking at the internet, I don’t see many ideas worth dying for. The only idea on there seems to be that we should watch the immense human misery unfolding before us and just wait for the most immiserated, most oppressed people to turn around and tell us how to stop it. It seems that there exists a curiously unexplained belief that the conditions of exploitation will by themselves generate a solution to exploitation – and
that to suggest otherwise is condescending and superior, like mansplaining. But what if the conditions don’t generate the solution? What if we’re waiting for nothing, and all these people are suffering without the tools to end their own suffering? And we who have the tools refuse to do anything about it, because people who take action are criticised. Oh, that’s all very well, but then, what action do I ever take? In my defence I’m very tired and I don’t have any good ideas. Really my problem is that I’m annoyed at everyone else for not having all the answers, when I also have none. And who am I to ask for humility and openness from other people? What have I ever given the world to ask so much in return? I could disintegrate into a heap of dust, for all the world cares, and that’s as it should be.
Anyway, I have a new theory. Would you like to hear it? Ignore this paragraph if not.
My theory is that human beings lost the instinct for beauty in 1976, when plastics became the most widespread material in existence. You can actually see the change in process if you look at street photography from before and after 1976. I know we have good reason to be sceptical of aesthetic nostalgia, but the fact remains that before the 1970s, people wore durable clothes of wool and cotton, stored drinks in glass bottles, wrapped food produce in paper, and filled their houses with sturdy wooden furniture.
Now a majority of objects in our visual environment are made of plastic, the ugliest substance on earth, a material which when dyed does not take on colour but actually exudes colour, in an inimitably ugly way. One thing a government could do with my approval （and there aren’t many） would be to prohibit the production of each and every form of plastic not urgently necessary for the maintenance of human life. What do you think?
I don’t know why you’re being so coy about this person Felix. Who is he? Are you sleeping with him? Not that you have to tell me if you don’t want to. Simon never tells me anything anymore. Apparently he’s been going out with a twenty-three-year-old for about two months and I’ve never even seen her. Needless to say, the idea that Simon –
who was already a grown man in his twenties when I was fifteen – is having regular sex with a woman six years my junior makes me want to crawl directly into my grave. And it’s never some ugly little nerd with mousy hair and interesting opinions about Pierre Bourdieu, it’s always an Instagram model who has like 17,000 followers and gets sent free samples from skincare brands. Alice, I hate pretending that the personal vanity of attractive young women is anything other than boring and embarrassing. Mine worst of all. Not to be dramatic, but if Simon gets this girl pregnant I will throw myself out of a window. Imagine having to be nice to some random woman for the rest of my life because she’s the mother of his child. Did I ever tell you he asked me out on a date back in February? Not that he actually wanted to go out with me, I think he was just trying to boost my self-esteem. Although, we did have a very funny phone call last night . . .
Anyway: what age is Felix? Is he an old mystic man who writes you poetry about the cosmos? Or a nineteen-year-old county swimming champion with white teeth?
I could arrange to come and see you the week after the wedding, if convenient –
arriving the first Monday in June. What do you think? If I could drive it would obviously be easier, but it looks like a combination of trains and taxi journeys might work. You can’t imagine how bored I am of rattling around Dublin without you. I quite literally long to be in your company again. E.
9
On Wednesday, Alice and Felix were picked up at Fiumicino by a man holding a plastic pocket with a sheet of paper inside, on which were printed the words: MS KELLHER.
Outside, night had fallen, but the air was warm, dry, saturated in artificial light. In the driver’s car, a black Mercedes, Felix sat in the front, Alice in the back. Beside them on the motorway, trucks overtook each other at alarming speeds with horns blaring. When they reached the apartment building, Felix carried their luggage up the stairs: Alice’s wheelie suitcase and his own black gym bag. The living room was large and yellow, with a couch and television. Through an open archway was a modern and clean-looking kitchen. One of the bedroom doors led off the back of the living room, and another to the right. After they had looked inside them both, he asked which she would prefer.