Looking back on my state of mind at the time, I am reminded by analogy of the enormous power of Christianity to convince the believer of his fundamental and never-ending guilt; I also stood (we all stood) before the Revolution and its Party with permanently bosed head, and so I gradually became reconciled to the idea that my words, though genuinely intended as a joke, were still a matter of guilt, and a self-critical investigation started up in my head: I told myself that it was no accident those thoughts had occured to me, that the Comrades had long been reproaching me (undoubtedly with reason) for “traces of individualism” and “intellectual tendencies” […]. (46)
…
I must admit […] that I was one of the last to adjust his vision to the altered light. The reason was that my entire being refused to accept its lot. […] I finally understood that my rebellion was illusory, that my non-resemblance was perceptible only to me, that it was invisible to others. […] I realized that the line tying me to the Party and the Comrades had irrevocably slipped through my fingers. I had been thrown off my life’s path. (49, 51, 52)
…
All the lines were cut. Broken off, my studies, my participation in the movement, my work, my friendships; broken off, love and the quest for love; in short, everything meaningful in the course of life, broken off. All I had left was time. Time I came to know intimately as never before. It was not the time with which I had previously had dealings, a time metamorphosed into work, love, effort of every kind, a time I had accepted unthinkingly because it so discreetly hid behind my actions. Now it came to me stripped, just as it is, in its true and original form, and it forced me to call it by its true name (for now I was living sheer time, sheer empty time) so as not to forget it for a moment, keep it constantly before me, and feel its weight. (53)
…
Sadness over the sudden realization that there was nothing exceptional about what I had been through, that I had not chosen it out of excess or caprice or an obsessive desire to know and experience everything (the sublime and the despicable), that it had simply become the fundamental and customary condition of my existence. That it precisely defined the range of my opportunities, that it accurately depicted the horizon of my love life from then on. That it was an expression not of my freedom (as I might have seen it, say, a year earlier), but of my submission, my limitation, my condemnation. And I felt fear. Fear of that bleak horizon, fear of that destiny. I felt my soul shriveling, I felt it retreating, and I was frightened by the thought that it could not escape its encirclement. (62)
—The Joke (HarperCollins Perennial, 2001).
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
christianity never appealed to me. i’m glad my parents weren’t in that particular group.
i’m always impressed by how many ways there are to see things. a person has a reality and for them it is everything. they declare it so, and yet i will come along and have my own life that may or may not confirm. i will think about what i live, write it down, declare it so, and someone else will come along and have their own life, beholden to nobody else’s definitions or declarations. life is very freeing that way. nobody can write anybody else’s story. though we can find our own in other places if we choose to look…
the last graf is sad, indeed. disillusionment is a drag. until you choose your next illusion. gotta have something to keep us going… 🙂
I am of course reminded by this text of my infamous Reeducation and its results – although I am not sure the results were as permanent as for this character, or at least as they seem for this character sixty pages into the novel. Still – he is literally in reeducation, and the description of it makes me realize why it is so accurate that I call mine that! 🙂
[Content of original comment deleted – although I have a copy of it, the fake e-mail associated with it, and the IP address from which it was sent, in another file!]
People with personal questions please e-mail, identifying yourself and giving a real e-mail address. With very few exceptions I will answer your mail, although whether I answer your question depends upon what it is.
In other news, the Zapata King is spammed due to being off topic, rude, a poor reader, a bully, and a general harasser, and a wimp.
–Z
[Original content deleted.]
Anon, the IP associated with your last comment was in the Netherlands. I do not know who you are, or whether there is a reason more specific than general curiosity why you are asking me these questions. Take care of yourself, and be well. –Z