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On warm, rainy January days, I can’t help but feel that my life in New York is a comedic prologue to the dying-off of the earth; an inconsequential dance before the gates of eternity. And certainly, that’s all it can be: a few moments of meaningless pleasure or pain floating free between the hammer and nail of nature and time. I wonder why I consider anything that happens to me to be significant, why I distinguish between a good and bad date, or rehearsal, or lunch, or coffee — when, realistically, the earth has a bad fever; when I am actually the virus, or a member of the virus species — human being — that the planet is trying to clear out of its system. It’s incredible really: that my brain is a little planet operating within the context of this much larger planet; that I have complete significance for myself, and none for anything else — and rightly so.
The only significant — and what qualifies, or makes, significance? I use this word so loosely, I realize… — thing I can do is write, specifically, by hand. Only practical tasks, only creative, specific, concrete acts can bind me to the world. If I lived in the country, I should plant trees; in the city, I should plant thoughts, plant little radical seeds of insight and despair. That is what I tell myself. But even this is just a consoling fantasy — writing, creating, inspiring. Perhaps fifty people read any given thing I write — not enough to lend my literary…
