I’ve only had my Emotion Thesaurus for three months and it’s falling apart. An invaluable resource is deteriorating before my eyes. I shall miss it when it’s gone.
I shall miss its one hundred and thirty emotional states. I shall miss the cooresponding bodily reactions, visceral responses and associated thoughts. I shall miss fear, adoration and paranoia. I shall miss powerlessness, rage and defiance. I shall miss them all.
But now it’s falling to bits. The page on happiness has become detached and is flapping around wildly, and hatred is looking shaky too. It’s an upsetting state of affairs. The early collapse of the thesaurus can’t be just bad luck. I’m certain that its lexicographical death throes have been caused by something:
- It could be poor binding and substandard book page glue.
- It could be that I’ve used it too much – three years of synonym searching compressed into as many months.
- It could be due to vigorous writing too close to its bookshelf, the vibrations from the laptop keyboard shaking the pages free.
- It could be due to obsessively looking at that one particular page, in a vain attempt to emulate happiness and look like a real human being.
- It could be symbolic of a general emotional collapse, my turbulent emotional waves pulsating outwards and wrenching the pages free.
- It could be the terrible state of the world, and the swirl of toxic emotions emanating from our collective subconsciousness, finding expression in the only way they can, by dismantling my recently bought emotional thesaurus.
- It could be gravitational waves from a nearby supernova, passing through my house, compressing and stretching the very fabric of spacetime and easing the pages free; the last cries of a dying star rippling through the solar system.
- It could be the first sign of the end of this world system, and the beginning of the next phase of existence, where all beings dwell in eternal darkness, buffeted by endless howling winds, scratching at the desiccated earth and searching for the hope that is now utterly absent from this ice cold universe.
It’s probably the book glue though, and I’ve noticed that some of the other pages have got coffee stains on them. I should buy another copy. I might even treat myself to a hardback this time.
