You see a couple walking towards you on the boardwalk. The woman looks forty-ish, and wears, above a grey dress, an expression of dissatisfaction which looks like it’s been there for quite some time. The man is considerably older, dressed in a crumpled tuxedo, with a smile more forced than genuine.
‘Very smart,’ you say in passing.
‘Why thank you,’ says the man, stopping in his path. The woman doesn’t bother to do the same until she notices him. Her sigh is heavier than a dying car engine.
‘Well, aren’t you going to say thank you, Elina?’
‘Oh, why bother? I’ll probably run into them again at some point in my immortal life.’
‘You say that about everything, my dear.’
Ah, of course. Elina Makropulos, the eternally thirty-seven year old woman. You infer that the man must be none other than Bernard Williams.
‘Don’t you like living forever?’ You ask, thinking how nice it must be to never worry about old age and death and walking sticks. Elina stares icily into your very soul. You immediately regret ever having spoken.
‘Take it from me, young one,’ she intones. ‘Being immortal is seriously overrated.’
‘She’s exhausted all her categorical desires, you see,’ says Williams, shaking his head. ‘Now she’s in a constant state of existential ennui. But I try to keep her entertained with various activities. Speaking of which, we need to be on our way, or we’ll be late to the opera.’
‘Oh, what are you seeing?’ You ask, despite not knowing the first thing about opera.
‘The Mikado,’ replies Elina with as little enthusiasm as possible. ‘I’ve seen it approximately one hundred times. Unlike me, it gets old.’
On that note, the two of them continue past you. Williams makes the effort to wave goodbye, but the only movement you see from Elina comes from her handbag: a small black cat with blue eyes pokes its head out and yawns at the day. Eureka is only marginally interested in this sight.
You let your new pet perch on your shoulder and carry on walking along the shore, listening to the big waves break up into little waves, and then those waves break up into littler waves, over and over again.
You also wonder how many other philosophers go to the opera here.
YOU ARE READING
Your Adventures In Philosophy Town
Historical FictionThis is what happens when you take a writer and give her lots of Ethics revision to do: as bizarre as I knew this was going to make me look, I decided to take the crazy philosophical adventures my mind had been concocting and put them onto paper...b...
