Overwhelming Quiet

Chapter One: Emptiness

Kenji was 18 years old when he came to the conclusion that he did not appreciate a single thing in the world. Or about the world for that matter.

He had always held a very evident dissatisfaction to everything life offered him. Friends, teachers, movies, songs on the radio. He didn't understand just how heavily that weighed on him until one particular evening, the summer after he graduated highschool.

Kenji was leaning on an elbow against the checkout counter of his town's only bookstore, The Missing Page. The store's owner—his name was Anthony—was a balding, not-quite middle-aged White man with freckled hairy arms and cheeks that perpetually carried a blush. Anthony was a widower who loved to talk about his admiration for his goldfinch, Ron Swanson, and his distaste for auto-tuned music. He and Kenji weren't friends by that metric standard of following each other's social media and existing in each other's Contacts app. But he was the only person Kenji talked to regularly during the past few years, and Kenji was his only customer that knew Anthony's full name. Anthony Henrit Jones.

Anthony Henrit Jones asked Kenji a question he was notorious for deflecting. What was his favorite book? Kenji then had to explain that to pick a favorite implies that he had consumed a decent amount of literature in his life and had thus enjoyed a selection of it. While it was true that he had read a lot, he hadn't held any one piece of writing in his heart.

Anthony, as usual, was unimpressed. "That's not what I asked. I'm just asking which book you like the most out of what you've read."

"I'm not sure I want to dignify any authors with nominating their book as my favorite," he said flatly.

"Well, I don't think they can hear you."

"I think if there was a great piece of writing brought into the world, there would be some kind of reckoning. We would all read the book and collectively feel some kind of soulful connection. You know. Remember when Gangnam Style was so popular is spread like the plague? So far, we're only living in a Twilight world. I don't think we're there yet."

"You must not have read a lot of The Greats, then."

"I don't believe there are that many great authors. There is always a fault to any author's writing and to their line of thinking." Kenji knew that The Greats referred to renowned authors of classical works. Those they make you read about in school. He had in fact read a decent selection of the classics. Stories and poems and narration that made him question his own perception of the world and the air he breathed and the way the world churned together like bicycle gears. But he had given up on many of them. The more windows and angles he glanced at his life through, the more depressed he became. But perhaps that was the ultimate goal of fiction. To think so much that depression is inevitable.

"Just because nothing can be perfect doesn't mean that it hasn't enhanced our lives. Perfection is impossible. Therefore beauty exists." Kenji imagined Anthony taking a plump cigar to his lips and exhaling a heavy cloud of smoke like a kind of pseudo-intellectual Cheshire Cat.

"I can't name very many things that have enhanced my life that significantly."

Anthony laughed, and when Anthony laughed, YouTube compilations of sleeping puppies had nothing on the wholesomeness of the sound. "You're the most spoiled kid I know." And no, this did not insult him. Kenji registered the teasing yet doting tone of voice. He may have been right. In all the proper senses of the word, Kenji was spoiled. He was lucky. So why was it so hard to feel like it?

Anthony was his passionate preacher and The Missing Page was his church cathedral, and like any good Christian, Kenji often fell asleep during long, tiresome lectures. He wasn't sure how long it had been since he drifted off, but when he woke up, it was to the tail-end of a sermon on Lana Del Rey and the role she occupied in music from a feminist perspective. Admittedly, Anthony knew a great many things about a great many things. He had a wealth of knowledge regarding the history of music and the individual artists that have shaped the ever-flowing current of song. And Kenji often wished he cared, at the level that he did, about cultural influences and societal behaviors. But people were never going to change. No one cared how their actions influenced each other, not on the micro or macro level. The world's going to shit, it's going up in a blaze of global warming. And caring really doesn't change that. He also really did not want to hear him talk about Lana Del Rey.