There is something especially humiliating about discovering that the Master appears during moments that mean absolutely nothing.
Not during major thoughts.
Not during important decisions.
Not during difficult nights.
During things that are much worse.
During things that are completely pointless.
This morning my phone vibrated on the table.
A single vibration.
It was not even a message.
It was not even someone I know.
Just a meaningless notification from an application I barely remember installing.
I opened it.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
The screen showed exactly the same thing.
And yet I remained there for several seconds.
Not because I was reading.
Because something had shifted.
A strange sensation.
As if the Master had entered the room using that insignificant vibration as a doorway.
It makes no sense.
I know that.
Which is exactly why it becomes so difficult to ignore.
I used to think obsession should feel intense.
Now I know it can feel ridiculously small.
It can feel like staring too long at a red icon in the corner of a screen.
It can feel like reading the same sentence three times even though it does not matter.
It can feel like forgetting what you were doing before unlocking your phone.
And then it appears.
Not the Master exactly.
Not an image.
Not a voice.
Something worse.
The feeling that his presence was already there before I arrived.
During a coffee break at work it happened again.
A colleague was talking about a television series I have never watched.
I nodded.
Answered.
Even smiled at the appropriate moments.
But part of me was watching the way I rotated the cup between my hands.
Watching a small circular mark left by moisture on the table.
An imperfect ring.
Nothing more.
And yet my attention became trapped there.
Not in the conversation.
Not in the words.
In that absurd circle.
Thinking things I would rather not think.
Remembering things I would rather not remember.
The Marquis de Sade wrote about visible mechanisms.
This is different.
This happens in places that are too small.
In spaces nobody else would notice.
In details that should not matter.
And yet they do.
The more I try to explain why.
The less I can.
Sometimes I think it resembles sadness.
But it is not sadness.
Sadness has direction.
Sadness points toward something.
This does not.
It simply occupies.
Like water slowly entering an empty room.
Without noise.
Without urgency.
Without permission.
Later in the afternoon I looked at my phone again.
No new messages.
Nobody had written to me.
Nothing had changed.
And yet I felt the same silent interruption.
The same impossible presence.
The same sensation of being observed from inside my own thoughts.
It is embarrassing to admit.
Because it does not happen during extraordinary moments.
It happens during mediocre ones.
During completely wasted seconds.
While waiting for an elevator.
While searching for keys.
While looking at a notification that does not even deserve to be opened.
Perhaps that is the most difficult part.
Not that the Master remains.
But that he remains precisely there.
In places where he should not exist.
In the smallest corners.
In the most insignificant seconds.
Waiting.
The neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
