A Man Falling In Magritte’s Painting
- daisy
- Feb 5
- 2 min read
That morning I woke up at 5 o’clock, as I did every day. I turned off the alarm clock with mechanical, automatic movement.I got up, headed for the bathroom. I looked at my reflection in the mirror. And like every morning, there I was. My eyes were swollen with sleep, my face pale and marked by a few wrinkles. Time passed, and I was still there. Still there. Always here. Facing my mirror, my eyes always filled with the same things.
My eyelids were drooping, I hardly slept that night, as I did every night. Or perhaps, they were closing as if in protest, a bodily and unconscious rebellion — were they also tired of seeing the same things over and over again? This sad face, this cold, small bathroom, this hole of an apartment, this gray city, that cramped office?
I adjusted my tie and long coat, and slipped my cap over my head. Maybe it could help contain all these thoughts.Setting foot outside the house, the gray sky filled with me, with us.So many people, humans, very composed, straight and elegant, rained down on the city. At one point, there were so many of us that I wondered, floating and in midair, if we were falling or if, on the contrary, we were harmoniously and neatly ascending to the clouds, as in an elevator, against gravity.
I looked around me, that morning, not like every morning, I was surrounded by me, by us, by my peers and equals.“And even as I fall (or ascend), I am precise,” I thought, looking at the many me’s in midair, lined up, the impeccable coats falling down their bodies, the fedoras on their heads, the serious looks. None of the me seemed to wonder what was happening. They simply accepted their fate.
“I fall, or I ascend,” nothing more, or nothing less.
This thought began to disturb me. Is this how I want to live my life? Accepting everything, not fighting for anything? Abandoning that curiosity I felt as a child, however, for my surroundings? Do I really want to fall? Or rise?
That morning I woke up at 5 o’clock, as I did every day. I turned off the alarm clock with mechanical, automatic movement. I smiled. And I went back to sleep.
“I deserve it.”
