Perhaps it is because I read that mice do not experience humor, not as such. Joy, yes, sadness, yes, camaraderie, esprit de corps, et cetera, yes, but humor, no. I then began to ask myself, To what degree do humans truly experience humor? To what degree is the experience of laughter real?

Possibly, it seemed to me, at that moment in the night as I lay sleepless beside my dozing wife, possibly humans also do not experience humor. In fact, there is only discomfort at some iniquity or lack-of-fit, and that finds expression in a false-face of joy. And that therefore, since as we know, there is no false-joy, i.e., every smile is a real smile, smile yourself to happiness, et cetera, the false-face of joy becomes joy, and laughter becomes happy. But at its root it was just discomfort.

How then the case of the mouse? Well it seems they simply do not experience discomfort at life’s blunted edges and crooked apertures. Not feeling that discomfort, they have no need to find things funny.

In the notebook by my bed, I made a note to further investigate the subject. I suppose now there is no time. Or to put it differently: soon, all my existence will be an investigation of this very thing. There is no time left for anything else.