Identity

Chantal’s phrase, “Men no longer pay attention to me,” kept echoing in his mind, and he imagined the story of her body. The body was lost among millions of other bodies until the day a gaze filled with desire landed on it, separating it from the darkness of multiplicity. After that, the gazes multiplied, igniting this body, which has since traversed the world like a torch. That was a glorious and luminous time; but then the gazes began to swirl. The light gradually faded until the day this body began wandering the streets like a wandering nothingness, translucent at first, then transparent, and then invisible. On this journey, the phrase, “Men no longer pay attention to me,” represented the red signal that signaled the body’s gradual fading.
No matter how much he declared that he loved her and found her beautiful, his adoring gaze could not console her, because the gaze of love is the gaze of isolation. No; What she lacks is not the gaze of love, but rather a flood of anonymous, vulgar, and lustful gazes that descend upon her without choice, tenderness, or refinement. These gazes are what draw her to human society. The gaze of love, however, tears her away from it.