Reading Nietzsche is like smoking crack — an unadulterated hit.
After writing this second sentence I felt good enough to take a walk on the Heath. While ascending Parliament Hill, a forest of cranes stretched across the far horizon, it began to seem to me that, in writing about Nietzsche, I was really writing about boredom, confronting the problem of boredom. All activities are boring, I thought then, because being conscious is boring, and although reading is boring too, it is less boring than all other activities. Consciousness, that was the real problem. To be conscious is to be bored, to seek distraction, and reading is among the least boring, most distracting of all boring activities. That is why I do it, and why I don’t bother doing anything else, if I can help it, I told myself.
I returned to the flat and, too exhausted to work any more that day, stared at the window till the sun had gone down and it was necessary to stand up and turn on the lamp. Glancing in the mirror before going to bed, I was surprised to find that, without having noticed, I had fallen into a state of what can only be described as severe neglect. Not only did I look dishevelled, as was to be expected, but I looked like an old man. And not only that — I also looked demented. I looked like a demented old man, a demented old tramp of a man, the kind of person who should not be let near children nor vested with any responsibility whatsoever. My hair, which had been slowly going grey since my mid-twenties (the result, I was told, of a vitamin deficiency I had never bothered to learn about or rectify), had massively accelerated its process of greying, so that overnight, it seemed, I no longer had a head of black hair streaked with grey, but a head of grey hair flecked with little veins of black, tiny pockets of resistance mopped up by a merciless occupying force. The skin beneath my eyeballs sagged like that of a man twice my age. On the whole, I resembled nothing so much as a wilting plant, left in a pot by a window not facing the sun.
The following morning, after a good sleep, and heartened that I had finally made a start on my study of Nietzsche, even if I had written only two sentences, I arose early and went to buy the makings of a decent breakfast. It was a warm day, and I made a point of lingering for a moment at the grocer’s counter, issuing what I intended to be a casual remark about the weather. Having eaten breakfast, I shaved carefully, and combed my hair in such a way that the grey did not seem so overwhelming as it had the night before. I made myself a strong, very sugary coffee. In the living room I opened the window to let in some air, and sat down at my desk with sunlight streaming all around, to email Natasha. I told her I hoped she was doing well, and that her family was holding together in this very difficult time. I gently suggested she might call or email me soon, the fact being that I hadn’t heard from her in quite a while, though of course that was because she was stricken with grief and not thinking about phone calls or emails to a distant boyfriend. I made a jocular reference to her red shoes. Then I moved on to telling her about the development of my thoughts regarding my study of Nietzsche, hinting at significant progress already made. I explained my recent intuition that the core of my project was no longer Nietzsche himself, but boredom, the existential problem of boredom, as I put it. Nietzsche was merely the platform from which I could launch this enquiry, this meditation on boredom. Then again, I wrote, sipping my coffee, it was entirely possible that Nietzsche was the backbone of a more ambitious and expansive work that would meditate not only on boredom, but on the myriad existential quandaries brought to light by the experience of reading Nietzsche, of which boredom was only one. If this is the case, I must never stray from Nietzsche, I typed with sudden vehemence. Nietzsche is the prism through which I will analyse the human situation in all its multifarious components. I must never stray from Nietzsche.
I pressed ‘send’, then got up to make another coffee.
Days passed and I waited for Natasha to reply to my email, or to phone me, but she did neither. I tried calling her Russian number but there was no answer. Days drew out into weeks, time unmarked, indistinguishable time. I spent many hours sitting in the chair, more or less at peace now, contemplating Nietzsche and the study I would one day write of him. The work itself had stalled; I no longer wrote, only reflected, and reread the opening pages of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which I considered the essential Nietzschean passage. I myself was ‘the last man’; I understood that now. Mostly I read nothing, sitting in my chair in silence, whole days passing. My fears had dispersed. I would write my book on Nietzsche eventually, and even if I didn’t, somehow that was OK too, because I was living the book, encountering Nietzsche in a manner which went beyond literature. I knew I would never make it to Turin. I thought often of the filthy and stinking toilet in the Dublin Mail Centre where I had first read Nietzsche; I wondered if it was still in use, whether some earnest, anguished young man was sitting in there at that very moment, discovering the awe and terror of Nietzsche, of a world which was drifting away from all suns, falling as through an infinite nothing.
Summer ended. I had stopped washing the dishes. It was over a month and a half since Natasha’s last email, and two months since her last phone call. My savings had dwindled and soon I would have to apply for benefits. I no longer read anything at all. One afternoon I opened my laptop and reactivated my Facebook account for the first time in years. I clicked on Natasha’s profile. There, I found a photograph, posted two weeks earlier by someone named Dmitri. The photo was of Natasha, her father and brothers, and several people I did not know, standing in a ballroom at some semi-formal occasion. Everyone in the picture was smiling. Natasha, with an enchanted expression, gazed past the others at this Dmitri, who smiled back at her with a calm, self-assured gaze. Natasha had one hand on her father’s chest, and she was wearing a pair of bright red shoes — brighter and redder than the shoes I had been sleeping with for the past several months. After staring at the photo for some time, I deleted my Facebook account and shut the laptop.
In the bedroom, it seemed to me that Natasha’s old shoes were no longer as shiny as they had once been, and no longer as red. In fact, it seemed that they were not red at all, and perhaps never had been, but magenta, or wine. I now even recalled, or seemed to recall, hearing Natasha referring to them, not once but several times, as her ‘wine-coloured shoes’.