The whole text : https://aedjmis.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/eyesoftheplacebo/
I still remember her eyes.
Just like it was yesterday.
Boring day. Just another boring day, one could count thousands of them – filled with nothing, days that certainly happened without leaving almost any trace.
Boring, ugly, yet faceless day.
I met her near the old bridge. Her red hair gave some noble-like shine to the rusted and soiled remains of the Koloss, as they called it. Her lips moved, as she kept repeating something, with her eyes stared somewhere far, far away from here. It was nearly hypnotizing to watch her.
Suddenly, she darted to the middle of the bridge, screaming, almost growling – and stopped. Now she was touching the column, smiling and curious, just like a child first seeing a toy.
She looked back at me.
“Do you think this is real enough?”.
Real enough? Seriously?
“Excuse me?”
She smiled again,and now it was a smile of a patient parent.
“Do you think this is real enough”, she repeated in a calm, deep voice.
“Sorry, I still don’t understand.”
“Have you ever heard of placebo?”
“Uh..well, I guess..”
“Have you ever seen any Matrix movie?”
“Yes, I have”, I replied. “So what difference..”
“Why can’t you understand then? Why can’t ANYONE understand it?”
She must be crazy, I thought. She’s got to be mad. Mental, as they call it here.
Pills-driven, chaotic person with something very important missing inside.
So why am I still here, listening to all of this?
“Have you ever loved? Have you ever felt something that was strong enough to take you away? Have you ever questioned the things you’re living in? No, you haven’t. Nobody wants to find this out – and the truth is right here”, she started crying again. “The truth is right before your eyes, and yet everyone’s too blind to see a bloody thing.”
“And what would that be?”
“The truth is”, she answered, “that nothing’s real enough, if you take a really good look. The truth is”, she said in a higher tone, “that there may be no truth. No truth at all. You may be my fantasy, and vice versa. We both could be inside a someone else’s lucid dream. We could be a dream of the bridge. A dream of the planet. An instant hallucination of Solar system, if you want to. When you..”
Suddenly, a cough started. It was a rough cough, the one you wouldn’t expect from such graceful young woman.
“Beg pardon. When you wake up and uprise too fast – haven’t you had that strange feeling, like you aren’t in your body, but just a spectator, a voiceless, powerless gazer?”
“Well, I know what you’re talking about, but that’s just…”
“That’s not my point. How do you know what’s real?”
“How do I WHAT?”
“Yes, you heard me. How do you know that all this is real?”
“Why would I need to know that? It’s just real, that’s it.”
“No, that isn’t. What season is it now?”
“What? Summer, but..”
“Why summer?”
I stared at her, astonished.
“Why summer? Because it’s warm, and it’s shiny, and…”
“… And because you’ve been told it’s summer”, she said with a smile. “You see, we have names for almost everything, but we know them because we’ve been told before. The skies are blue, everyone knows that, right? But what EXACTLY are “the skies” and “the blue”, apart from the words? “Blue” is “blue” just because back in the days someone said “Alright, let’s call this blue”, and everyone else agreed, or something like that. We think we know the world, but all we know is a shape. A shape, a label, a description from someone else. It’s like listening to music someone sings to you. How would you know if he’s not mistaken? How would you know if you aren’t, as well?”
“And you”, she continued after a short pause, “you don’t even ask yourself about something like this. You just live along, drifting on a stream with your head down and your eyes closed. As agent Smith, as I recall, said in the first Matrix movie, “living your life – oblivious”. You feel something – and at the same time you don’t really feel it, you see? Feeling is a motion, this way or another. But you don’t move, you’re just a spectator – making decisions, and yet so powerless.”
She went silent. All of the sudden I realized that it was almost a midnight.
But I didn’t want to left her here. And even if I could’ve, I didn’t asked myself why.
root 