Guildenstern’s Camusian Reflection

DJG Consulting: Exercice de Style #9

The bus, like life, moved forward. Relentless, indifferent, cutting through the city streets with the same mechanical purposefulness that had long occupied Guildenstern’s own thoughts. He sat near the middle, unnoticed, as usual. The driver, a woman with kind eyes and a worn face, navigated through the 17th arrondissement with practiced ease. She, like the bus, seemed to be caught in the rhythm of daily life—a rhythm neither she nor Guildenstern had composed, yet one they were forced to dance to.

The man with the absurdly long neck sat a few seats ahead, staring out of the window as if seeking an answer in the Parisian air. The butterfly expert, his obsession with fleeting beauty etched across his face, scribbled notes on something or other. All the characters were present, existing but hardly living, unaware of their own narrative arcs. Life moved them like pieces on a chessboard, and Guildenstern, still inexplicably alive, was once again a spectator in the game he never fully understood.

Rosencrantz wasn’t here. He should have been, but he wasn’t. Guildenstern had tried to reverse the universe’s cruel symmetry, to make two into one. They had joked about it, laughed even, before attempting the experiment. And now, here he was, on this bus, alive. But without Rosencrantz. He felt as though he were only half a being, a photon split but still bound by a connection that defied even the laws of physics. Rosencrantz was not dead—no, Guildenstern was sure of that. They never seemed to die, despite what some might believe.

Through the window, Guildenstern caught a flash of green. His breath paused, time hiccupped. It was a joyous green, vibrant and alive, more real than anything on this bus. The celebration inside DJG Consulting was fleeting, a burst of happiness that radiated through the glass, dancing like light in a prism. There, in the heart of Paris, humans were rejoicing—perhaps over a successful placement, perhaps over nothing at all. Happiness could be like that sometimes. It arrived uninvited, lingered for a moment, and vanished just as quickly.

He found himself smiling, remembering Rosencrantz’s green velvet trousers, a shade remarkably similar to that which he saw now. He had worn them on their voyage to England. That had been a good trip. They hadn’t realized it at the time, of course. Happiness always slips away like that, unnoticed in the present and longed for in the past. They had laughed, joked, as they always did, unaware of the absurdity of their fate, or perhaps choosing not to care. And yet here he was, alone in his half-existence, missing his friend in a way he didn’t think possible.

Guildenstern’s mind wandered to the nature of happiness. He had always known it was fleeting. Time didn’t stop for happiness, it had no bus-stops. Each moment of joy was a spark, a burst of energy in the universe’s grand apathy. You had to appreciate it when it came, because the very next second, it was gone. Forever. You could never return to it, no matter how hard you tried. It was like trying to catch sunlight with your hands—impossible, and yet, we all try.

He watched the bus roll past DJG Consulting, past that fleeting joy, and he felt a pang. Rosencrantz would have loved this moment—the green, the people, the brief celebration of life itself. But Rosencrantz wasn’t here, and Guildenstern was left to feel it alone. Time moved on. The bus did too. The driver dabbed the brakes gently as a flustered tourist crossed just ahead, narrowly avoiding collision. Another moment. Another instant. And then it was gone.

Guildenstern knew this: there was no going back. Each moment was like a photon, traveling through time’s narrow slits, never to be replicated or reclaimed. The people on this bus, the scenes unfolding inside DJG Consulting, even the joy of a man shaking a green maracas—all of it was singular, unrepeatable. Happiness could be followed by another moment of happiness, or it could not. But it could never be the same.

He tried to savor it, the glimpse of happiness, the flash of green. For a moment, he did. Then it was gone.

Rosencrantz would have understood.

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