at this time of night

 

At this time of night,

When all the businesses are silent,

When all the homes, sidewalks, televisions and even dogs are quiet,

When the sound of a pen writing on a piece of paper is clearly audible,

One can hear many thoughts,

For the mind is rarely silent.

At this point, some people may feel restless, listless,

they may drink, watch television, finish a list, read, or meditate.

The actions are not really important,

for they are all distractions.

But on this night,

At this time of night,

When every phone, recording, computer, and even voice was silent,

I sat and listened to my thoughts,
and although the hopeful, joyous and grateful thoughts
were regularly interrupted by the angry, resentful and even violent ones,
I was glad to hear them all.

 

The great novel

 

It was a calm, summer evening in the great city of Paris. M. had decided to spend a month there, and was renting a small bachelor apartment in the working class neighbourhood of Belleville. The activity of the building echoed through the halls: parents speaking to their children, the rattling of pots and pans, and people listening to their favourite music. He felt inspired by the many great writers who had lived in Paris, and had spent a good portion of that day visiting their local haunts, many of which were still open for business. M. had always wanted to write a novel loosely based on his own life. He was already a solitary person by nature, so the idea of spending countless hours alone writing seemed  very appealing to him.

In an attempt to create the perfect, distraction-free writing atmosphere, he cleared his small kitchen table of all clutter, and sat down with several pens and sheets of paper. As he stared at the blank loose-leaf, he experienced what many Zen masters throughout history have struggled to achieve: a totally empty mind. Unable to achieve inspiration on his own, he decided to open a beer; it would be the first of many. After that there was a brief flurry of sentences, but as he reflected on his life, he wondered if would anyone want to read such an eye-watering-ly boring story? There would definitely have to be a great deal of artistic license. Unable to achieve artistic license on his own, he had a second beer.

Now as it often happens when someone tries to focus on a particular task, doing almost anything else seems much more appealing. Rather than resist the pull, he decided he would take a short break from his writing and indulge in a distraction. He put on a Ray Charles CD and began dancing around the apartment in a provocative manner, making sure first that the shutters were fully closed. He danced for about ten minutes. He then returned to the table, wrote a few more sentences, and then became extremely restless and distracted once again. It was becoming quite humid, so he took off his shirt... and pants. He danced through the rest of the Ray Charles CD, his small rolls of fat glistening with perspiration. After much drinking and gyrating, he decided that perhaps writing an entire novel was too ambitious, and he would focus instead on very short stories. He titled his first one The great novel.