Essays in Idleness

Yesterday’s rant was a little on the long side. I look back over it this morning, and fight the temptation to add more and more. Instead I cut it back a little. On the one hand, there are things to say. On the other, one might wish to show connexions between one thing and another. Between any two paragraphs, it often seems to me, another paragraph demands to be inserted, revealing the strand of gossamer that bridges the canyon.

Meanwhile, a correspondent complains that I’m writing faster than he can read. (Maybe he’ll get lucky and I’ll die soon.)

Old man with unsharpened pencil, and grubby fingernails, inscribing an exotic abecedary, deeply incising his strange symbols; furrowing the paper, sheet after sheet. He sits at a table in the public library. The tangled hair; the smell like Camembert.

The word “graphomania” sometimes comes to mind.