What did it all mean?

Goddamn nothin.

What will it all have meant?

I didn't believe in it, you see. None of that fulfilling stuff, supposed to be fulfilling stuff. Thought it was a ruse and a detour and still do. Some day the wisdom may descend upon me like a herald of glory. But no, all a ruse.

You had wished to dedicate yourself and work with heart.

But it all comes to nothing, no? You are not your body, are not you mind, are not your dreams, are not your talents, are not your love, are not your breath, are not are not are not. You are not your heart.

You hold this position for spite only.

Of course. That is as close as I get to the belief in god! If there is no god, who am I trying to spite?

So much overtook them now, so many channels of looking and hearing, the young people filming themselves, good god, always more young people, always younger people, and younger people, all of them growing and aging as they themselves were doing, but bringing with them the accoutrements of a technical mastery unseen before in history, that sped up their lives even as they pined to slow down, the video blog and the self-produced music, all of these younger ones so much happier with the new technics than they; and, yes, all of them self-aware, not a whit less intelligent but more so, more intelligent and beautiful and serene, more cunning and ambitious and active. It made them pine for an age they could almost believe they had experienced in fact, when beauty was felt as a soft breeze upon the body. But the wisest of them believed that that salad age, that dew-touched morning and mystic dawn had less real youth to it than present yearning, less remembered greatness than current ambition. It was their unassuaged lust turned backward, made to wear a period costume. And the very wisest looked upon the new wonders with the greatest skepticism.

They find it not so much in the object of focus but the habit of focus, the direction focus finds itself maddeningly, compulsively pointed, its choice of objects, the lighting in which it sees them, the perspective and proportion they assume relative to other objects nearby. The man presumed to see best at night sees mostly night.