Tic toc. We're on Mount Palomar. We're not going to the observatory. We're here to create. So, I sit in front of the computer. I stare at the screen. I get up to sit outside in the patio. The patio is full of wasps. At night, there is space
between the trees. A space that hides something. I want to do. I want to do so much. But what for? Whom am I writing to?
So, I think, I'm bored of dreams, dreams in which my dad is alive, and my mother is wrapped in bandages, like a mummy, and the bed is hot and sweaty.
I want out, but there is no out to go to. I'm trapped, yet again, within my own immortality.
Tic toc. A month later. I'm in London, I am as void as an unworn sock.
Tic toc, says the big industrial clock in the pseudo-revolutionary pub.
"You had a writer's block," says Tim, "it happens."
"I had a validation block," I reply. "I'm sick of that sad, lonely, thumb up. I don't matter. Not anymore. Perhaps never. If people, society, the world, whatever, if they want to push me out, then fine, they win. I don't have an audience." "You don't know that. And there are thousands, millions of writers, who too feel irrelevant because they are pushed out by commercial media."
"Do you think I should keep on writing, then?"
"I am not saying that. I'm just saying that you are not alone."
Whatever. I feel suddenly elated. Not because I'm not alone, but by the pointlessness of depression. By the pointlessness of feeling pointless. As if I could escape.
There is only me. Me and the world. If the world wins, I'm me. If it doesn't, I'm me.
It all seems to lead somewhere, and Tim makes sure I don't get run over while crossing the street. Perhaps he has a point about survival. Survival is pretty good. It's a decent form of success. Perhaps I should stop pursuing opulence.
I don't know what it is, but I feel that Tim is human in a way I can relate to, that not all my readers have died in the 1920s, and that, ultimately, nothing matters that much.
Sometimes, sometimes, sadness can be profoundly amusing. Tic toc.
