This Christmas my aunt bought two trees: one was short and plump and the other tall and thin—she put the plump one indoors and the tall one outside. I saw the situation at once: she is the short and plump tree—hence she belongs indoors, in pride of place; and I am the tall thin tree—and, since she is angry with me, I belong outside the house. The trees represent our physical characteristics.
If you do not think in this way, you will not understand anything—you will not see anything. Hence I was once in a hotel in Paris with a girl and two other friends; we were in the lift and I said, “I need a glass of water, could I get one from your room?”. It’s positively indecent to ask a girl for a glass of water in a lift—yet I did it anyway; after all, I wanted a glass of water I could kiss. In a hotel, there’s water in every room—but not water like that.
I fell out with a friend over Brexit; just before we finally broke apart we met in a pub and he said: “Has your hair changed colour?” If I had been more awake, I would have said: “No, my hair has not changed colour, but your eyesight has improved—now you can see the colour it was all along.”
Hence I walked into a very pretentious hipster café yesterday, and everyone there was involved in much egotistical preening. I could tell I would disturb the situation—sure enough, the mood shifted at once. I ordered my drink and stood to the side. The most vain barista began to talk about a caramel cookie a customer had ordered, he brought it to the customer and said: “It has strong flavours; it’s a divisive snack—you either love it or hate it.” Reader, I was the cookie.
If you do not live in this way, you do not live in reality.