6.00 PM, I've opened a bottle of wine; I think that's acceptable. 6.00, and the long sag of the afternoon over. And what am I to write? What should I gather here? Have I learned something today? Have I wisdom to transmit? The afternoon sagged - it was too long. I spent it in my office with the dirty windows. I edited and wrote. The day passed.
And I looked up, and thought: I'd like to write, but elsewhere, not here. To write, and not a review, or an essay. To write and if only to remind myself I can write, that would be enough. To make a mark on the day, to write I was here on its walls. Here and capable of writing. Here and writing was possible, and there was writing, and I can let it roam ahead of me.
A bottle of wine. I brought back some books from the office. X, a hardback. Y., a paperback. And here beside me, to be read. Only I can't read, not now. Can't stomach it. First of all, to make a mark. To divide the day somehow. To break afternoon from evening; the lag in time from time regained. To regain time - is that what I want? To look back somehow.
Having endured the afternoon. Having hoped in the morning and endured in the afternoon, now at last the evening, and I can look back; the day has risen a little, like low hill, very gentle, up which I cycle coming home, and I can look back, to say, that was the distance traversed. That was the swamp of the afternoon, and those the gardens of the morning.
And all the way back until when the light behind the curtains woke me. All the way to when I woke too early. Make the mark, then. Write - and mark the line that divides suffered time from time regained. As I look back over the day. As I let my look pass over it, the whole day; the morning, with its promise and the afternoon endured.
A hardback, a softback. Which should I read? Which should I take to my bed and read? But I am drinking wine. Drinking, and writing. Drinking to rise a little higher, to gain a little more height so I can look around me, not to this day, but the others. A passage of days, a week, longer ... And to gather it up here like a bushel, what I've learned from those days. To mark it here, and that I've been here, ready to learn, ready to gather.
I think I'm half drunk. Half drunk and unready for wisdom, and to gather anything up. Half drunk, at the end of the afternoon, and having endured the afternoon. Half drunk and unsteady, and not ready to be trusted with what was to be learned. Half drunk, and to mark the page is enough - to mark it, to say, I was here, even if the mark is forgotten, even if I never read these lines again.
A day has passed - almost a whole day. The page nearly turned over; a day at its end, and now the evening, the still-light, maddeningly light evening in late spring or early summer, whichever it is. There's too much light. Too much calm, wan light. It's driven me in. It's kept me indoors, working. Writing, or trying to write. Working, or attempting to work.
What have I done? What was achieved? I looked back at my prose with the usual disgust. I reread what I wrote with the usual boredom. An essay for a journal. A journal essay I must write and then rewrite - what boredom! What errors fill my first draft! What crudenesses! What idiocies!
Never a clean line. Never a clean and simple line. If I had a sentence - one sentence - then it might all be saved. A single clean sentence like a swordstroke. But there's five hundred muddied sentences instead. Five thousand blurred words instead, thrown at the page in vague, fuzzy chunks.
Chunks of words - paragraphs - that roll along, crude and stupid. To make a crude and stupid whole, an edifice built to nothing, rising to nowhere - what boredom! What stupidity! Here, at least (but where's 'here'?) - here at least the illusion of movement. At least the idea of progress, one post, and then another, one and then another, in a mad and stupid profusion.
But with no rewrites, no looks back, so Eurydice can remain Eurydice, following me from Hell. So I can dream of her beauty, of her perfection and forget that it's only a slug's trail that links post to post. Or that those posts are only disgusting traces, slime across the world. Slime and mold in a glistening line.
There is no Eurydice; no one follows me. No Eurydice to lead from hell and no hell from which to lead her. We are all above ground now. Above, in the wan, clear light that falls equally on each. On the surface of the world, its crust, and beneath the closed heavens.
And the boredom is steady. There is the steady dependency of boredom, into whose arms I fall. Boredom grinds the hours on. I'm afraid of empty time, says W. Afraid - very well, why not? Afraid - yes, why not? why else write? why do anything but write to hold back fear and boredom, and the fear of boredom?
Write and hold it back. Write - work (but is this work?) and drive the fear back. Climb on your hillock and survey the day. Climb it and survey - look around - the whole day is like a marsh, the sky above and swamp below. The afternoon endured - and now the evening.
But at least half an hour has passed. At least time is passing. And I dream of leading time like a calf with a ring through its snout. Leading it into a sunnier place, a higher place. Leading it into brightness, where the sun shines down and the heavens are open. But boredom. But fear. The calf is a minotaur, and the day a labyrinth, and what thread can I follow that would lead out of here?
Half drunk, and in half an hour. There's a hardback and a softback. A half-empty bottle of wine. A bottle of water. And there's the yard before me, where the light has turned - creamy. It's a little creamy, not unpleasant. But the skies are still closed. And the world is as though waiting. As I am waiting, although waiting's flattened itself out, waiting's fallen. Waiting's lying down, all across the world.
I'm ready to learn, ready to gather. Ready to tell about the day, and these few days. A single clean sentence, that would suffice. A single sentence like a sword-stroke, all in one go. Sometimes I tell myself, describe the day. Sometimes I say, describe what happened. And I want to begin, to make a beginning, to narrate it all, and from the first.
But something seizes writing from the first, and from before the first. A kind of curse, that sets it wandering. A curse that lets it wander from itself, and from all narration. In a wierd abstraction. That says nothing. That marks that saying, doubling it up, saying nothing twice over, once and then again.
Nothing - and then nothing. Futility and then futility. But at least it is marked, I tell myself. At least there is a line drawn, and it's evening. A drunkard's line. A half-drunkard's wavy line.