For the Marquis de Sade, the ego was never a matter of self-love.
That is too small.
Too human.
Too much like an emotion.
What appears in his books resembles something else.
A force of erasure.
A tendency to look at the world and wonder how much of it could disappear without anything truly being lost.
That was what unsettled me.
Not the cruelty.
Not the scandal.
Not even the desire.
The ease with which certain people can imagine an increasingly empty world.
And feel relief.
I closed the book.
The room remained motionless.
The afternoon light still rested against the wall.
There was a small mark beside the light switch.
I had never noticed it before.
Or perhaps I had.
I wasn’t sure.
I walked closer.
It was insignificant.
A stain.
A scratch.
Something I would normally ignore.
Yet I kept looking at it.
I thought about Sade.
I thought about his characters.
There is always someone surplus.
Someone whose presence becomes intolerable.
Someone occupying space inside a fantasy that demands absolute sovereignty.
Perhaps that is why his worlds end up feeling so empty.
Not because they seek pleasure.
But because pleasure gradually becomes a process of elimination.
This can go.
This too.
This too.
Until nothing remains.
Or almost nothing.
I sat down again.
The silence felt strange.
It was not the absence of sound.
It was something else.
The feeling that the room was calculating how many things it could lose and still remain a room.
The lamp.
The chair.
The books.
Me.
The thought appeared and vanished so quickly that I never fully formed it.
Yet it left a trace.
Like a forgotten word.
Like a name you know but cannot recall.
I looked again at the mark beside the switch.
For a moment it seemed slightly larger.
It probably wasn’t.
But I did not get up to check.
Lately I distrust certain forms of verification.
They almost always make things worse.
For years I believed the ego meant wanting to occupy the center.
Now I suspect there is a more extreme version.
Not wanting to be the center.
Wanting to be the only thing left.
There is an important difference.
The center still requires a perimeter.
The only thing requires nothing.
No admiration.
No recognition.
No company.
Only empty space.
That was what I began to see in Sade.
Not an obsession with pleasure.
But an obsession with disappearance.
Pleasure appeared often.
Yet it felt secondary.
An instrument.
A tool.
A way of moving toward something else.
Toward a landscape increasingly cleared.
Increasingly silent.
Increasingly depopulated.
As if true excitement did not come from the body.
But from the possibility of removing obstacles.
People.
Limits.
Consequences.
Witnesses.
Everything that reminded desire that something other than itself existed.
The room was still there.
The wall.
The mark.
The light.
Yet I felt something uncomfortable.
The feeling that disappearance always begins modestly.
Not with the world.
With something small.
An object.
A habit.
A voice.
Then another.
And another.
Until one afternoon you realize that silence no longer feels like an absence.
It feels like a victory.
I need to move my neck.
I am not moving it.
I should.
The base of my skull feels cold.
I look at the mark beside the switch.
Now it seems smaller.
Or perhaps the wall is larger.
I am not sure.
I do not get up to check.
The last time I checked something I found a note.
I do not remember keeping it.
Yet it continues to appear.
Always in different places.
Always carrying the same sentence.
There is still too much world left.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
