A week comes to a close, one that has been fraught with
doubt, consistently
challenging and in an awkwardly
detached and
alien way, somewhat interesting. And I don’t mean the arrestingly
engrossing interest one shows towards that
sliver of
flesh unwittingly revealed by an attractive member of the
opposite sex. I refer to the preoccupation that one devotes to flashes of the
arcane that present
seventy-seven questions, each leading to an old wooden door that opens up a
labyrinthine path into a dark
forest of unquantifiable allusions.
I’m walking across a
featureless desert, with a deeply uninteresting
horizon and dry, dry sand under my feet that glows faintly with the colour of ancient
memory, rippling with every step in an
unsettlingly organic way. There is nothing here. No
breeze, no
smell, no perceptible
temperature variation.
I’m staring at the
thin,
wet parchment, that stretched across a wooden frame awaits my first
pen stroke. I look around my desk, select an
oblique nib from a disorganised assortment, dip it into an
inkwell that recalls my
grandfather’s term papers, and hold my breath. If I press too hard the parchment will
snap. If my stroke is too
light it will be irreparably
insignificant. If I hesitate the ink will spread, a
brutal and
unforgiving reminder of a moment of
weakness.
I’m looking out of the passenger-side
window of my
car. The door is as described and she is
inside. I stare at it, expecting it to offer a solution to my
quandary. The letterbox opens and shuts, silently mouthing “
Leave while you can.” I’m
rooted to the seat, appreciating the comfort of being
cosseted within a familiar
cockpit. And yet the promise of untold
pleasure and forbidden
bliss snakes out of the
gaping mouth of the surprised letterbox with the assuage that only years of experience can yield, filling my
cocoon with tiny, tempting voices.
The
sand parts. A
shapeless mass emerges and pours into an
invisible mould, taking the shape of my thoughts.
The
pen breaks through the parchment, revealing another year gone by.
I’m still in the
car.