Pale

A holiday is imminent. You're supposed to relax, but you can't.

Organise your idleness. Choreograph your laziness.

How about this for a plan? Spend all your time reading.

Okay, that's fine. After all, reading is a pleasure. But that's not reason enough for you to do it. No, you'd have to turn it into a task, a competition, or at least into something that involves notching up every achievement with a tally mark. Could War & Peace count as a double? Lucky A S Byatt's new one is really fat. "What did you do for the summer?" You broke your personal paperback record.

But you won't be able to read all the time. There'll have to be other pursuits, other distractions. How about writing? After all, that's what you are, isn't it? A writer?

No way. That one's not happening. Tried it before. Complete disaster. Not only does it drag you down into a November gloom, it takes everyone else with you. And you don't get many chances to show people there is the odd mildly tolerable side to your psyche. You can't afford to screw up every opportunity.

Well, what about drawing? Sketching? You could take that book with you, the one you bought years ago, the one that claims to help you tap into the talents hiding on the right side of your brain.

That's not the world's worst idea. But you can see it bringing more failure than success. Each day would be defined by whether you'd produced a picture. And you know full well you're not going to be able to wander down to the beach with your pencils and erasers and sharpeners and acetates of various sizes. Don't set yourself up for a fall.

Why not, though? You're quite good at that.

How about just 'being'? Why do you have to do anything? Just 'be'. Find the moment and slip inside it.

Don't be silly. That's the not sort of thing you do. That's the sort of thing you just read about in books by tranquil Dominicans. Books that make you look into the distance and think, 'If only. If only you could...'


You're about to watch a film in which a man living all alone on the moon is literally confronted with himself. And you think, 'Yup. All the corniest, most familiar metaphors are the best ones.' And maybe this year you're feeling more agitated about all this because you really don't want to be that man on the moon.

You're on the verge. You know you are because every sappy number played through the speakers at Starbucks threatens to reduce you to a sobbing infant. You know you are because reading The Mill On The Floss is intensely uncomfortable, intensely provocative: the bygone pace of the narrative leaves you too much room to pause, to think, to reflect. You know you are because when you watch The Red Shoes you identify almost completely with Lermontov.


In a few days, you'll be on a beach. You'll step onto the sand and leave behind an imprint of your foot, a dip for each toe, a shallow cup for your heel. And a wave will rush forward. And when it pulls away, the ground will be flat and bare.

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See you on the other side of the summer, people. When the days are even shorter.

Comments

Mr. T. said…
Mr Alavi,

Forgive me if I have misread that, but that does sound like a rather bleak assessment of the summer holidays. Its enough to make me think you WANT to go back to work??

...and that's certainly not what I think you should be considering - surely!?
Blogger said…
You're quite right, Mr T. But sometimes it's an interesting exercise to take one tiny speck of darkness out of the doldrums and turn it into a mini-epic of depression on the page.

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