That day, evidently indifferent towards himself and the world with a hint of melancholy laden with the fatigue of some unfulfilled pleasure, silent, hypnotized by the periodicity of his monotonous life, and with an expression as if he had long reconciled with the prospect of death, he gazed into nothingness.

Time drained of future, in constant confrontation with his past that was helplessly sinking into oblivion due to his need to forget, dragging along all those years that might have meant something, embraced him tortuously, burying him in the unbearable nostalgia of a present so small and at the same time eternal.

He lived in a charming little town where everything repeated itself and the few choices gave way to ever greater compromises. Every passing day was a hymn to negligence and a testimony to his diminishing essence. He was becoming a lesser man. ‘Hope’ was but another excuse to nourish stagnation while procrastination gnawed at his expectations, leaving behind a yesterday built on time’s ruins. He longed for the future, but he did nothing but blame his past and calculate how much future he could spend to buy more time just to ensure a tomorrowless present.

His life had ended a long time ago. Now, he just went on living, indifferent to yesterday, carrying within him the sorrowful feeling of a constant contemplation about tomorrow: “Would anything change? If yes, how much effort would I have to put forth?”

For the last twenty-five years he lived alone and got so used to it that could not fathom how relationships could be mutually beneficial. For him symbiosis was like wearing a worn-out sock that lost its stretch ages ago, with a hole in the heel. Still, he had been in love once or twice in his life. Maybe twice. Both times it happened in autumn. That’s why he loved his autumn long walks by the seaside, passing whispering eucalyptuses, carefully hidden from the indiscreet stares of the wide-eyed fools.

His loneliness’ echoing followed him everywhere. An unearthly rumble, barely audible, a symptom of the hubbub of everydayness, like a mild tinnitus perceptible only in quietness, reminding him that he would never be alone but a captive of some undefeated necessity.

His life’s persistent monotony caused him constant fatigue. ‘Tomorrow’ was out of reach and everything in this town was so pitifully predictable that he simply didn’t care for much any more. In his exhausting dreams he kept seeing himself standing between opposing mirrors with his reflection repeating ad infinitum, doomed to diminish with every repetition yet never completely disappearing, never redeemed. Becoming ever less. An amorphous suspicion of something human, eternally fading into ambiguity, unable to escape a vortex of nothingness, trapped between ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ forever. This was his life.

His chronic sadness, just like a mild, depressive force, was patiently preparing the unforeseen collapse of his essence. He avoided looking at himself in the mirror as he got older and older. All he saw was a worse version of his past.

Everybody around him wandered aimlessly, vainly trying to reach a vague ‘somewhere’, in a world where time diminishes, where the only comforting melody is the monotonous ticking sound of the great clock of weariness.

Seasons were passing by in a blink of an eye and people, grave and bowed, in blissful unawareness, followed the steps of almighty Death, guiding them all to oblivion. No wind of change was strong enough for these poor, old souls who chose the safety of a windless cove over the adventurous discoveries of the marvellous journeys of the wide, open sea. They never realised that a ship is better to be lost in the boundless ocean than to rot on dry land.

Under the city lights when night fell, people’s shadows emerged darker than night itself, in search of their betrayed lives, to relieve them from loneliness and misery, only to return after the short journey had ended, even more miserable. It was a life that couldn’t bear them, which every morning perished and came alive every night. Only to perish again.

Indecisive and frightened, he aged with no expectations, and time, septic and stiff like death, was spent digging the past, desperately struggling to understand what went wrong. And he got melancholic for long periods, indulging in solitary walks on the same path forged by all the lonely people.

He couldn’t remember when he smiled out of happiness for the first time, but he could not forget the first time he cried because of a truth he would prefer never to have known, and the years spent afterwards, in search of the lies that would redeem him from that cruel truth.

No consolation could relieve him of the consequences of his negligence. And everything became harsher when he admitted, what he long owed to admit if he wanted to have any kind of future, that he could not absolve himself from the responsibility of his choices, by plowing lies to violently bury the truth ever deeper.

He spent most of his life as an uninvolved spectator. From a very young age, he carried within him a sense of guilt for a crime he never committed, but felt was attributed to him simply because he existed and was who he was. He felt ashamed, isolated himself, and spent most of his time hidden.

At the age of twenty-five, he concluded he didn’t need any friends because people in the name of friendship end up building facades and walls. Sometimes, he would engage in romantic relationships which, however, ended ingloriously.

At thirty-seven, he had a dream that made him think about life, urging him to change everything, but he changed nothing nonetheless. Again, out of guilt. And so he went on living, forgetting this dream, remaining loyal to the same old choices that seemed promising but ultimately proved as unreliable as his certainty.

At forty-two, on a rather gloomy and a slightly sunlit morning, he wondered, “If I’m not going to be young forever, should I waste my time merely existing?”, but didn’t pay much attention to it, since he was still young enough to be self-contentedly bored and not yet in fear of death. Now at fifty-three, time, from yesterday’s friend became tomorrow’s enemy.

He was in a state of siege by what he called “an enduring routine with no prospect of ever ending.” Every day, he confronted the same faces with the same expressions, identical people, magnificently manifesting the suffocating pettiness hidden within them. One-dimensional figures, buzzing around exchanging greetings as dictated by the protocol of hypocrisy, like puppets moved by the invisible hand of decorum and moral convention. Trapped in the mercy of a “good morning” and a “good evening”. Lying while smiling sincerely, lending their love with interest, trusting while keeping well-hidden secrets, coming so close to each other but always at a safe distance from intimacy, since the towering obelisk that dominates their souls’ deserts was built to worship the omnipotent, great “I”.

All of them, bearing the same indiscreet, penetrative gaze, the same hysterical sigh, the pretentious indifference burdensome even to themselves, a cover up for their morbid curiosity about the lives of others. With their hideous intentions being both their redemption and punishment. Silently lamenting the choices they once boasted about. He needed a strong wind to carry him away like the clouds, to the realm of the ever-changing forms, always becoming a materialization of his fantasies.

He was making a tremendous effort to endure a reality with which he never came to terms. He deliberately deluded himself into thinking that tomorrow would be different, and this was his lifetime’s work. He wanted to protect himself from the unbearable mediocrity of others by being mediocre himself. There were times that everything felt so confusing.

Whatever remained unfulfilled left within him a deep sigh, that newborn wind that brings with it a tiny scratch on our souls. Over time, they became thousands. Blindly swirling around seeking to discharge their force, turning into unruly winds. He was like a balloon trying to contain a growing typhoon.

There were times when the world seemed microscopic – the entire universe was crushed under the weight of his significance until this idea, at the pitiful sight of his facade in the mirror, collapsed, putting everything in perspective. Immensely small in an immense cosmos, with his imagination’s dim light struggling to leave a brushstroke in infinity’s dark canvas bounded, like everyone else, by boundless time.

He spent more time reminiscing about the past than dreaming about the future, and time whispered the words of some sadness that would last forever unless he accepted what he already knew; that he chose deception and backed away.

K. was an insignificant, meaningless extra to this tragic comedy. He was never the main hero; the superior figure who defies rules and causes rifts in the moral edifice of vanity, seeking an elevating and redeeming death, a symbol of his victory against all moral, religious, and social barriers. He was never completely loved.

He passed through the hubbub of life unnoticed, not leaving a mark on the existential map of humanity, as if he had not lived. An abstract stranger, indefinable like the society he could not grasp, most of the time silent, a passer-by, accidentally captured by the indifferent gazes of other passers-by, only to be forgotten swiftly, and forever lost in the haze of their breath.

The way he perceived vanity in relation to others determined his attitude towards himself and the world. He felt special as he felt mundane, and took pleasure in trying to define himself, by decoding how others reacted to his behaviour and opinions.

Due to his sincerity and straightforwardness, he became burdensome, causing restrained displeasure among those around him, and embarrassment, which is why he had chosen to abstain from social interactions. And although all this used to amuse him for a time, it eventually became as tiring as everything else in his life. So tiring that a death by boredom would mark his life’s high point.

Thus, long periods of time went by without meaningful contact. He was becoming like a decorative, non-functional, lifeless thing, placed in a prominent position, reflecting a pointless magnificence, eventually becoming, from the wear of overexposure, indifferent and unnoticed.

In this barren life where any flower of change was doomed to wither before blossoming, he had become his own prison. He was the one building the walls he wanted to tear down.