Solidity: Rourke's Routine, Chapter 1

I fabricate cancer to pass the time. Something has to be amiss – always. It’s an unpopular conclusion, at least to those with moral fiber, or dreams, that if life were splendid all the time that it would churn and become a bore. Most people, or at least those that aren’t nihilists, as I see it, can not experience happiness as it is defined as all happiness is, as I have noticed in myself, and typically in most people, the absence of depression. Depression is a state of normality. Thinking this does not make me a pessimist, as from noting that depression is the norm I have subversively addressed that happiness and bliss therefore exists, and that I do see it. If you asked me if the glass was half full or half empty (presuming that you can accurately measure the density of a glass to such a minute measure as to get an exact half) I would tell you that the glass is a solid and it’s contents a liquid. I would tell you that the quickest way to get them to the same state would be to freeze the liquid, temporally bringing it to a solid state, and that liquid expands when it is solidified changing it’s density and how much it actually fills the glass and that the subject argument would then be nullified.

Rourke, as he will be addressed, was someone who shared my views, and, for all intensive purposes, you may imagine he was me, just to bring things to a more personal level – I’ve noticed that you enjoy things when you too can retell them in second person. Rourke would wake up every morning and abstain from partaking in a morning stretch, or even a yawn, as he did not believe that a day starts fresh. From sleeping to full consciousness, Rourke knew it was simply a continuation of a common timeline, even if the setting was different. He would, however, rub his eyes and take a double glance of his surroundings just to know where he’d waken up.  Rourke’s situation was different to yours. Rourke wouldn’t just go to sleep and dream. But then, what is dreaming when you’re Rourke?

Rourke would, every morning, without fail or second thought, check his diary. A diary he kept out of desperation. He would make sure something was amiss. He would make sure, before he started his day, that both the glass and the liquid had solidified. If the day before, on March 6th 1979, he had left a conversation with Sal, a girl he often met at the milk-bar, and even once attained the bollocks to ask for her phone number, on such a bright and empty note that petrified him to think it might bore her he would ring her and solidify the situation. The methods Rourke would use to bring her back down to earth, back to normality, and the slight insinuation of her internal depression, was a mystery but was never so harsh as to harm her esteem or her respect for Rourke.