Tale #141: If You Describe Each Moment Of A Person’s Life, It Becomes A List Of Crimes, An Endless Recitation of Horrors, A Biblical Judgement Upon Their Worth

“Enjoy your retirement, they said, as they read out the celebratory statement they’d prepared for the occasion.

“Towards the end, they summed up the facts of my life. All the data collated, all the facts and the figures and the failures, recorded at source not just by my devices but by all of theirs, all of yours.

“What struck me the most as I listened, as I watched, as I smiled and reacted exactly how I was supposed to, was not how much of this wasted life of mine I had forgotten, but how much I remembered. All those stupid comments, all those awkward silences, those social embarrassments, those cowardly retreats. All the regrets, all the shame. The lies, the truths. I remembered it all.

“I remembered it all.”

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Notes:

1. Written in December 2019
2. And with probably the longest title anything of mine has yet had
3. Even despite my love of long titles

Nietzsche And The Hole

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Notes:

1. The script for this was written on August 6th, 2020
2. And then the comic was made in September sometime
3. This was longlisted for the 2020 Observer/Jonathan Cape Graphic Short Story Prize
4. But got no further than that
5. The Baron was an attempt at seeing if I could actually draw Nietzsche
6. And though that experiment was a failure
7. It didn’t stop me trying again