Flesh Wounds
No More Buts
Sophia sat on the leather couch, scissors in hand, a mischievous glint in her eye. She had always been one to cut through the nonsense—literally. Today, her target was a stack of bills, or as she liked to call them, “paper-based thieves of joy.” The precision of the tufted patterns beneath her was not just a detail of the couch but a reflection of her love for order, a stark contrast to the chaos of adulthood she was less fond of.
Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.
— Emil Cioran (1911-1995)
“Dagger in the flesh, huh?” Sophia mused aloud, twirling the scissors like a Wild West gunslinger. She imagined consciousness not just as a splinter of annoyance but as a full-on, melodramatic stage villain, complete with twirly mustache and cape, jabbing at her sides. “Well, Mr. Consciousness,” she addressed the imaginary villain, “prepare to meet your match!”
Alexander peeked in, a smirk playing on his lips at the sight of Sophia's theatrical one-woman show. He leaned against the doorframe, fully expecting her to launch into another whimsical monologue about the perils of paperwork and the villainy of monthly expenses. Her bouts of existential humor were as much a part of the room as the leather-bound books and the oversized globe that served as their makeshift wine holder.
Sophia caught his eye and pointed the scissors at him dramatically. “Aha! My trusty sidekick. Ready to assist me in battling the nefarious Naysayers and their army of ‘Buts’?”
Alexander bowed theatrically. “At your service, my lady. Shall we shred these ‘Buts’ and cast them into the abyss?”
Together, they embarked on a mock-heroic quest to vanquish the paper dragons before them. Each snip was a triumph, each shredded bill a vanquished foe. The “Buts” never stood a chance against their alliance—Sophia with her steely resolve (and steelier scissors) and Alexander with his flair for dramatic timing.
With every cut, Sophia expelled a “but” from her vocabulary, slicing through excuses like a hot knife through butter. Bills turned into confetti, a celebration of every decision she’d delayed with a “but” that now lay in tatters, like the remains of a defeated paper mache monster at a child’s birthday party.
“‘But’ this, ‘but’ that,” she mocked with each snip. “No more ‘buts,’ except the one I’m sitting on!”
The room echoed with their laughter, the seriousness of Emil Cioran’s words lost in a flurry of shredded doubts and playful defiance. The couch, once a silent spectator to Sophia’s indecisions, now bore witness to the whimsy of their rebellion against the mundane.
Consciousness, with all its daggers, was no match for their humor. In the end, the “buts” were gone, the bills forgotten, and the room was filled with the echoes of their laughter, the true sound of victory over the mundane daggers of life.
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Heraclitus
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