Relief after two days when too much was possible to experience the old incapacity, that inability to begin, vagueness, a day spent doing this and that without focus. When the future is not a distant horizon, but is never farther than this or that obstacle, when it is a matter of negotiation of what is here and now.
Incapacity: really, there is an immense amount to do, too much, it’s overwhelming. But if there were nothing to occupy you, only the expanse of time, an open future which asked continually: what will you do? you would experience much more acutely that vertiginous desire to realise a Great Work, to fill your days with the Great Project that would make the future less indeterminate, less frightening.
Today, there is only the dissipation of projects, minutae, a number of matters which require my attention. Do you remember that scene in Pather Panchali when the impoverished Brahmin tears up the pages of his studies when his daughter died? Dream: tearing all the pages up, throwing it all away, discovering something of much greater importance. And do you remember the scene in Alien Resurrection with the alien-human hybrid, up against the wall of the spaceship, its innards sucked out and dispersed into space? That is a figure for the horrible/joyful experience of the pure future, of the broken horizon, the object of fear and desire ...