Nothing to complain about, nothing to induce bilious cries of injustice; no perceived universal biases against my favour, and no need to vent non-specific rage at the petty and the quibble. I have a tired head on, and a peaceful and quiet demeanour induced by green tea and Fry and Laurie Reunited. It’s a little bit boring, but it has that warm cuzzly fuddle that one comes to expect from such trésors nationaux. I’m in bed and exhausted, but strongly feel like getting up and wandering about. I might go for a potter, an amble, a womble, or a stroll. To the bookshelf and back, perhaps via the kitchen, and stopping en route to a window for a jolly good glare down the street.
The settled snow has taken a beating from the mildly risen temperatures and the day’s insistent drizzle, but footprints still have form and the threat of further snowfall hangs above us in the black night sky. The street belongs to the cats. Even though Saturday night has just conceded to Sunday morning the street remains silent and vacant of the throughfall of drunkards. An hour or two further inwards and the noise may start. The neighbours opposite might start playing music and standing outside to talk and smoke. Even rarer, yet more destructive, are the occasions when the inhabitants of the downstairs flat shout at one another or crank up the krunk. Sometimes they can disrupt our peace simply by leaving their flat for prolonged periods of time. Their big lonely Alsatian dog pines for its missing masters, and I consider whether the actions and deeds of Rorschach should be emulated.
But right now the silence is palpable and comforting. And the knowledge of no work tomorrow makes tonight a tonight’s gonna be a good good night night. Free of guilt and unwanted pressure I can read and write through my first wave of sleepiness; ride a second wave of writerliness (with the unfortunate side effect of coining ugly forced words like writerliness) into the Land of Time Well-Spent. Now please forgive my rudeness, but I must step away from the keyboard for the wander I have promised myself. While I am away please consider how rude it would have been if I had walked away mid-sentence without first politely making my excuses. Would it be as rude as answering your mobile phone while someone is talking to you, without first apologising (“Sorry, but this call is important, would you mind if I took it?”), instead of rejecting the call and returning it when your face-to-face conversation is completed? No it wouldn’t, because nothing can possibly be ruder than this, the rudest of all rudies.
The software used in making music is visually exciting. It has multitudinous colours and shapes, repeating patterns and scrolling bars, it has chaos and cosmos, monophony and polyphony, movement and sound, collage and montage. The software used in writing is a white screen with black text. Any attempt to change these colours is ridiculous and distracting. Should I complete my novel and begin sending out printed copies to agents and publishers, it would certainly be unwise to use tangerine text on a bronze background. Imagine my diminishing respect if I chose to communicate my prose through Comic Sans. Go one imagine it. Are you imagining it?
No comments:
Post a Comment