When you think someone’s not speaking to you, but then you realize he was “speaking to you” but he wasn’t actually speaking to you for a lack of things to say, then you wonder about all the things we do to ourselves inside our heads. You thought him not speaking to you was a significant event, a punishment of sorts, but you were the only one suffering from the made-up meanness of not being spoken to, which wasn’t happening.
However, the fact of his not having anything to say to you seems to indicate he’s goddamn sick of you, or at least your general presence offers him no happiness, solace, pleasantness, or warmth. And that’s sad to think of. But his general presence offers you none of those things either.
What his general presence does for you (besides moments of peace which are lovely) is like that prank where a kid leaves a flaming paper sack filled with dog shit on your front porch and rings the bell and runs away. You stomp out the flames only to get shit all over you. But the flames! The flames! There’s something so satisfying about stomping out the flames!
The kid plays the prank on you again and again because when you see flames, you stomp them automatically, like a trained animal. That’s all any of us are, trained animals … only the master has disappeared and now we’re just doing our tricks for no audience, never knowing if we’re doing them right or not.