An explosion of colors

The best moments are those of exploding light and emotion - the ones where you strike up conversation with grandmothers and whores alike, all making the kind of wonderful universal sense only you can understand and appreciate. Life is exploding in your veins, popping and bursting into existence, forcing its way ahead so as to make you understand how perfect everything is.

At the table next to you two french girls are getting drunk as hell, laughing and cheering and being funny like there's no tomorrow. Their first bottle of wine is empty, and with an elegant gesture of the left arm, they order a new one, giggling and enjoying themselves as they wait for the handsome waiter to arrive with their wonderful drink that will losen their tongues even further and make the hot Paris night even more enjoyable.

At your own table your father is eating dessert - a good looking creme brulée and a café au lait - while you're chugging down your fifth free beer, feeling like one of those magnificent starclouds imploding on itself, making everything as bright as the sun as it decomposes or recomposes into something new and beautiful, a matter unknown to you but which lets you master and control the world in which you live.

As you descend the stairs to the toilet chatter reaches your ears. At the bottom there are two women and a petite fille. The little girl is angry at whoever's on the toilet - they're taking too much time and she really, really has to go! You fall into a wonderfully vivid conversation with an elderly (not at all, she's really rather attractive and in her early 50's) french woman, who confides that she lately finds everything to be "comic" and that she speaks from the heart. You like this, declaring your understanding and admiration, her eyes sparkling beautifully in the crazy night air as you put your heads closer together and giggle, both drunk and alive and extremely in love with life and the feeling of not being alone.

As you talk and talk and try to understand eachother, the little girl with the wonderfully cute hair and the little skirt á la mode has had enough of the waiting. "This is stupid!" she declares to her mother, a pretty woman in her early thirties still bearing the attractive marks of child birth, and pulls down her skirt and little panties, before proceeding to pee on the floor right there in the corner.

The woman you're talking to bursts out laughing, how wonderful how wonderful oh lively beauty, and you exclaim "Wonderful!" and start laughing with her. The embarrassed mother excuses the little girl, she really, really, truly, had to go! Of course! you both say, laughing and pointing to your hearts and agreeing that the little girl is sincere and it's all rather great to be a part of. "Comic!" the french lady says, and you agree, it's so comic! A little while later she asks you to join her in the toilet, but you don't understand and the universe is popping and bursting and manifesting itself in your mind, and you remember that your father, the strange man, is waiting for you upstairs. You thank her, but no thanks, and as she disappears into the booth, the last thing you hear her old voice saying is "Comic!" and you agree, agree, agree, bobbing your heading and enjoying the light and the sound of that piano upstairs, a lifetime away, sounding like the first steps on the moon and dust filtering down and inward, telling and lying and composing pictures for you to see.

Up the stairs, fireworks in a cake, a girl is celebrating her birthday, looking cool and punk and chic and all those four letter words you know. She blows at the lights, laughing, and you explode in color, dreaming that enormous blue and red and yellow that engulf the couple kissing, needing models and already seeing your creation and you want to cry because being alive is just too good right now, the vividness of an imagination and a mind on speed, with everything pulsating and beaming  and screaming beautiful chaos.

Bubble, bubble, you dream, you see the sick girl and the flowers of Arles, you see Toulouse-Lautrec drunk and Redon lonely, private - and finally you see Klimt's Mada Primavesi, the most attractive thing in existence - they are all bursting, star bright and energized in front of you, defining and total, and forcing their way into your life as sand and dusts and the need for pure and bright oxygen. 

There's no way to escape them, they're too bright too real and too wonderful, loaded with the expression of final meaning, with lifetimes of work and results of  wanting to talk talk talk and always wanting to say something.

Gustav Klimt - Mada Primavesi (c. 1912)

Mada and her clear eyes, Mada and her dress, Mada and her legs - Mada and her colors, Mada and Klimt and Schiele and Munch, overworked and obliterated, mad with loneliness. 

The shoes, the shoes, the chaos of wonderful colors, Mada and her eyes.

Les joueurs d'éches

Sunday is the seventh day, the day for rest and relaxation. So it is said in the great Book, and it was your intention to follow this good advice, until you started working and forgot all about how tired you were (not to mention what the Almighty might or might not think about your transgression). For a few hours you're mesmerized in finishing a drawing you've been working on over the weekend. It's after a bust of Marcus Brutus, that strange roman fellow who helped assassinate the Caesar some 2050 years ago. You have to have done something right when people are still depicting you after such an infinitely (in human terms, that is) long period of time. It's turned out good, even though it didn't take much more than 10-12 hours to do - pleasing indeed.

At noon you decide it's about time to do a little of that relaxing you'd planned, so you head out into a bright and warm september day, of course in the direction of the Luxembourg garden, as there's nothing in the city to compare with it on such a day as this. And what a day! The sun beams down from a sky of great blue, the streets are filled with people singing and dancing and licking their ice creams with the utmost summerly delight. And how the garden itself is bubbling with fantastic and beautiful summer people! All the tennis courts are filled with good looking and sweaty men and women, young and old, skilled and amateurish - but all enjoying their game in the sun. On the lawns people are sitting, eating and drinking and rolling over laughing at some sort of french joke that's incomprehensible to you, but you still laugh, watching them and keeping pictures of them in your mind, strangely a little sad that you'll never see these people again.

A little further in the chess players are numerous and all exuberant. They're yelling and laughing and stomping their feet as the seconds on their clock tick away, their mind racing to find that one move that will crush the opponent and secure them the win of yet another game. The players are mostly men - men living for the game, men who remember thousands of opening moves and all know how to mechanically secure a win in the end game. But among them there are some women, old and young, beautiful and weathered, following the games, asking questions and playing the men who always grow excited when a woman takes an interest in the royal game.

At one table a stunning young german girl is playing an old french man. They communicate in a wonderful mixture of german, french and english, laughing as they struggle both on and off the board. She's got wonderfully long brown hair and a pretty face full of charming freckles, he's very dirty, with a large, shabby beard and an old cap on his head. You listen to their conversation and watch as the game progresses in a horrible fashion. They're both making bad mistakes, and every time the girl makes a bad move you take your eyes off the board and look at her pretty face instead, so you don't have to watch the coming slaughter. But the old man misses his chance, and the game continues. You want to move on, because you feel so bad watching this game and looking at the beautiful girl, but you just keep standing there, following their hands as they're moving the pieces around. You're thinking that its a great thing, the way they enjoy playing a game they're not very good at. You wish you could be that way too, just playing and talking and not caring if you're any good or not.

"Portrait of two chess players" - Daumier (1868)

And then it happens - she turns to you, looking at you with blue eyes half hidden beneath long lashes, and asks if you want to play chess with her. The old man is looking at you. The two other guys watching her and the game are looking at you. For a moment, you're looking at you. What to say, what to do! Oh, if only you were a man and not a mouse! You stutter a little, shuffling your feet. "Oh..." you say - "oh, no, I don't play chess." - What the hell, what on God's green and beautiful earth did you just say? I don't play chess! you scream silently inside yourself, thinking about the tens and hundreds of hours you've spent bent over a chess board, alone and with others. I don't play chess!

"Oh, I see, neither do I, really!" she says and smiles at you. It's not too late, you can still say you'd like to try the game anyway, and then lose gracefully to her, it's not too late! But your mouth remains shut. The old man shrugs happily, and they play another game of their wonderful and mediocre chess. You watch for a while, both laughing and crying inside, amused by yourself and your lunacy.

When you can't take it anymore, you hurry home, wanting to throw yourself at your work, screw the day of rest and relaxation! Better to be alone inside, deep in a world of your own, than to be alone outside, in the world of those who aren't too timid to open their mouth. As you run up the stairs your own fantastic words ring like giant thunderous cathedral bells in your head: I don't play chess!

Balancing it all out

There are days when you've been working so hard you're dizzy. Your head is spinning and your body feels light, rotating around its own axis and not quite belonging to you anymore. Outside it's getting colder, the leaves of the trees in the middle of the boulevard are slowly turning bright red, deep red, brown and then finally that greyish pale of death.

Sitting back in your chair you contemplate todays work, feeling faint but very happy with yourself, because you've done quite good. Drawing well is the kind of work that isn't physically exhausting - you barely move your body at all (which can be quite taxing after a couple of hours, actually) - but takes such immense concentration at times that you lose yourself in the drawing. When you finally resurface for air, your brain is light and your eyes see everything in different shades - light, lighter, darker again, near black, and so on.

Looking at yourself in the mirror, studying the play of light under your eyes and noticing those few strange gray hairs by your ears which she finds so sexy, you think about something you read in one of Van Gogh's letters. What was it he said? You're going to have to look that up... ah, yes, here it is:

"... Instead, as I started to say, one should plan for a period of between 5 and 10 years. I do not intend to spare myself, to avoid emotions or difficulties - it makes comparatively little difference to me whether I go on living for a shorter or longer time - besides I am not competent to manage my constitution the way, say, a physician is able to. And so I go on like an ignoramus, one who knows just one thing: within a few years I must have done a certain amount of work - I don't need to rush, for there is no point in that, but I must carry on working in complete calm and serenity, as regularly and with as much concentration as possible, as much to the point as possible. The world concerns me only in so far as I owe it certain debt and duty, so to speak, because I have walked this earth for 30 years, and out of gratitude would like to leave some memento in the form of drawings and paintings - not made to please this school or that, but to express a genuine human feeling. So that work is my aim - and when one concentrates on this idea, everything one does is simplified, in that it is not muddled but has a single objective. At present the work is going slowly - one reason more not to lose any time."

And a little later, a beautiful line that keeps one warm in the cold autumn air:

"That is how I regard myself, as having to accomplish in a few years something full of heart and love, and to do it with a will."

 They're good, determined words, full of spirit and resolution, and everyone who's ever wanted something has thought them, in some form or other. It's these kinds of words that are floating around your mind as you sit numb and tired, feeling a longing to embrace someone and for a few minutes be protected and allowed to forget just these kinds of words and thoughts of ambition and will.

The worst thing about wanting something so bad is the horrible guilt you start feeling every time you're doing something that's not strictly to the point. You start asking yourself "why am I doing this?" or "why am I resting now, when I could be working?" - and at the same time you know that if you push too hard you'll end up too tired to do anything at all, just slumping on your bed all day reading Judith Krantz, to punish yourself in the most hideous way. Some days you have to push yourself to work, and others you have to push yourself to rest. Never giving in to the urge to select the easiest way out is key to bettering yourself.

These are your thoughts as you pick up your piece of charcoal and go back to work, sighing and taking a deep breath - two more hours before the next break.

Memento mori

On a gray day you've got to be careful so that your mood doesn't turn black. It's a dangerous thing, bad weather, a dangerous thing to be treated with respect and sometimes awe, because it'll change the face of the world and all the people in it. When bright blue turns to angry gray, and green becomes brown and sulky, a wise man will bunker up safe inside his house, riding it out and waiting for brighter days. To your despair, you're not a wise man - but to hell with it!

Outside the wind is howling through the streets, up the long boulevards and down narrow little rues, chasing litter and leaves along and pestering the lonely and sad autumn people who see nothing but the browning colors and hear nothing but the lack of summerly joy.

You don't know where you're headed, but your legs are carrying you along, navigating and turning and taking you past all the hurried people, everyone wanting to reach their destination before the sky breaks open and drenches the city in icy rain that'll wash the sins right off even the most hardened criminal.

As you come to the end of a rue, you realize where your body is headed, taking you along for the ride. You're in front of the cemetary of Montparnasse, a giant and quiet haven for the dead right here in the middle of the city.

The cemetary isn't a good place to be for a man of your somewhat frail psyche, and especially not on a murderous day like this. As you enter through the guarded gates you hear the silent moans of all those who've exasperated, now quietly knocking on the walls of their tombs, wondering how to get out of there and back into the ranks of those who breathe and walk on the earth.

For a while you walk among the tombstones, reading the names and little inscriptions that go with them, looking at the sometimes monumental stones, put up to celebrate the dead, but ending up celebrating death itself. The oldest stones are crumbling now, torn down by the rain and the wind and forced to once again become part of nature, like the people they were put up to commemorate have become years and years ago. It's a comforting thought, that one day all men and all monuments built will be eroded and consumed by nature in its steadfast rhythm.

As the first wave of rolling thunder breaks in the sky, darkness settles upon the city and in the bright flash of lightning that follows a marble angel screams out from the depths of despair and for a second shatters your ears and throws you plummeting through the ages of time and back to the creation itself, in all its glory and violence and horror.

With a shudder you hurry along, a little scared and bewildered, wanting to get out of this madness, this place for the dead and not for the living. On your way you pass the grave of Baudelaire, watching as three young people write him notes and leave them on his tombstone. You wonder: what do you write a dead man? The same has happened at Satre and de Beauvoir's grave, and this time you have to stop to read, just to know what the living tell the dead. One is a thank you-note from a girl to Simone de B., for the strength she's given her. That's nice, you think, but the dead do not listen to the living. Another is a joke for the very much dead Sartre to enjoy: "Dear Mr. Sartre, today nothing existed - 2:19 PM" it says, and you're even more puzzled that people will tell dead people jokes. It's very scary and you flee, again hearing the dead tumble restlessly in their graves, angry and saddened that they're gone and lost to the world.

As you scurry out you think about your own death and the inevitability of it all, fearing the day and at the same time cursing your own fear. Wasting life worrying about death is an immensely silly thing, but you can't help it even though you try as hard as you can.

Outside there's a procession of wedding cars going by, full of laughter and joy - that's a fine thing and a wonderful contrast, isn't it? you think and for a moment you forget about the thousands of dead watching you leave, knowing you'll be back some day.

But then, as if God himself is watching you and wanting you full of anguish, a funeral procession comes the other way and pulls into the graveyard slowly and marked by sorrow. Now the green marble angel has torn loose from it's monument to circle above you, reaching into your chest and squeezing your heart with a stony cold hand. With only wild fear on your mind you run down the rue and home, to barricade yourself inside, shutting out the thunderous gray rain of the dead.

The mad ones

A bike is a great thing to have. By some wild and fantastic piece of luck, you've found one in some bushes, and now you're riding down one of those endless boulevards, humming and smiling and feeling fine. The bike is old and ugly and it's a miracle that it still keeps rolling, but it does, and greatly so! There's so much room in Paris, so much space to enjoy and make your own, wide lanes and intersections that'll take 7 cars side by side, and you marvel at this as you zoom along.

First you roll past an old couple kissing, thinking that they're so beautiful and old and still very happy and in love. He's got a husky gray beard like he just returned from digging gold in Alaska, and her hair is colored red like fire, consuming her head and making her bright as the sun. This is great, you think, I want to grow old just like that and with the wind in my face like this.

A little further down you have to stop at a red light, enjoying the break it gives your legs, even though you're going down hill. You watch a man eyeing some girls very candidly, looking them up and down and consciously letting his eyes rest on their breasts and in their crotches. The girls giggle and send him looks that are mixes of disdain and desire, and you burst out laughing, this is just too fantastic and a wonderful thing to see. The man notices you laughing, and he winks at you in that man-to-man way and starts laughing himself. Pretty soon everyone is laughing, and with a great feeling you roll on, the light has turned bright green again.

For a while you just keep rolling on your shabby bike, letting your mind wander, thinking about everything and nothing and getting deliciously mixed up with your own thoughts. Suddenly you understand what's bothering you: this is too fast, you can't see things properly. With a sad goodbye you leave your bike in some bushes, to be found by someone else in need of speed and that nice feeling of air brushing your face as you jet down the boulevard.

Almost immediately something new and marvelous happens. A thin, long haired and gaunt looking man stops you, wondering if you speak english. "Why, yes I do," you reply, actually using just those words: Why, yes I do! "Great!" he says and starts talking, telling you why on earth he ended up in Paris. You listen, great stars in your eyes, you're thinking this is wonderful and very nice. He's on a spiritual journey, he says, staying with a very holy and spiritual man who's helping him discover his past through meditation and the use of chakra stones. When this great person speaks he gestures wildly with his arms, pointing both inward and outward and truly communicating his feelings. "Fantastic!" you say, being solemn and honest, and he pauses to look at you, smiles and says after a second of thought: "Yes it is. Fantastic." - and then he goes on. He's discovered he's a victim of childhood torture, done to him by his own mother, the witch. Large eyes, not shocked but surprised. "Now the healing has begun," he says and touches his heart with those tiny spindly hands of his.  He has nothing to eat, he says, for now his mother has ceased all his assets as a means of forcing him to come home so she can once again control his mind. But he won't go! The healing has begun! Oh no, he won't go and you agree with him whole-heartedly, don't go! A wonderful and strange human, you think, and give him all the money you have on you, enough to get some bread and cheese, and he looks like he needs it more than you do - besides, you've got a little piece of bread in your bag, for later.

As you watch him scurrying away and up the boulevard, you think of Kerouac's warm and loving and amazing words:

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh..."

And you smile to yourself and say: He truly was a mad one, mad to be saved - a sad and great thing to see.

Now penniless you feel even better, remembering your mad friend and the piece of bread in your bag. It's the first sunday of the month, and the Louvre is free! There's an exhibit of spanish master drawings, and you hurry, hurry, because it's going to be great.

Jusepe de Ribera - Saint Gerome reading

Friday night

On a friday night there are excellent and wonderful things to see all over Paris. Walking up the rue d'Assas, headed for the gardens and thinking about the great Strindberg who used to live here, going through his inferno of fear and suspicion, you pass so many good looking people. There are boys and girls dressed up for a night on the town, all looking colorful and stylish and so vibrantly full of life and lust. If you keep your eyes on a girl for too long, she'll smile faintly, knowingly, and turn her eyes down and perhaps slow down just for a fraction of a second when you're passing, letting you feel her presence and then pull away and let time come back, you shaking your head and smiling, because it's awfully fun, even though it's a figment of your imagination.

Inside the gardens there's a comfortable quiet, letting you think and deliberate as you trudge along the intricate paths. Over by the museum the old men are playing chess, looking serious and thoughtful and moving invisible pieces with their heads and hands. Now and then a youngster comes along and beats them, and they throw up their hands and smile and shake their heads, all the while congratulating the young man who doesn't know what to say and starts looking embarrassed at winning. He might have the fastest brain, but life is still unknown to him, he's not a man yet and he feels it when the old and hard hands of the chess players tap him on the shoulder.

As you walk on, you think of Edvard Munch's words about painting: "I'm not painting what I see, I'm painting what I saw." They're good words, describing words - telling of a man whose life is an inner one. As opposed to depicting the model in her current state, she is used as a vehicle of expressing how he felt at some moment in space and time. Hence, of course, expressionism, you say out loud, and start humming.

There's a new sculpture up today. It wasn't there yesterday, you're sure of that. It's a modern piece, something intangible and impossible, boasting of nothing except being matter, having existence. The title you've already forgotten, all you can remember is that gray of granite or marble of whatever sort of rock was used, and you wonder why on earth someone would spend valuable time making something like that.

Walking on, feeling lighter now, less pressured. Your steps are lound in the shingle under your feet, your thoughts floating freely, touching on all kinds of pretty and comfortable subjects, letting you make up good stories about all the people you pass. There's a man singing a french song as he walks along the path up ahead. He must be a lawyer, you think, and you smile at him as he passes. He doesn't see it, but you still did it and that goes a long way. There's a red haired girl with a camera coming towards you now. You wonder if she's going to ask you to take her picture in front of the palace, but she passes, looking at her shoes. You think about her hair, wondering why it is bright red like that, trying to see her idea. Maybe there is no idea, except that red is a pretty color and it makes her feel special, knowing she's got that red hair for everyone to see. Maybe she's very shy, and fights it by doing something out of the ordinary.

The best thing to watch in Paris are all the wonderful lovers. Young and old, gay and straight, they're always tangled in hugs and kisses and tender words spoken so close they go right into the other persons mought. Their hands are all over, silently making love to their lover, eyes carefully watching as light sounds of pleasure bubble out and into the hot and cold air of the evening. Right now you're watching a couple that have been running laps together. They've stopped under the trees, already sweating and panting from the run, feeling lovely and tired and wanting the other person close. She's thin, with wide good looking hips and a mild, loving face. He's bigger, with a broad chest and well formed hands. She's holding him close, whispering into his mouth some secret for them to share, licking his lips between words. He looks dreamily into space, feeling happy and lucky and loving the evening and their tired breaths. All this you see in just a second, feeling deeply happy and melancholy.

Parallel to the rue d'Assas of Strindberg runs rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Somewhere in that rue Hemingway used to live back in the 20's. He's not there anymore, you can't even find his house, and the Café des Lilas is so expensive now you can't help but burst into laughter. Walking home you pass the Rotonde, ideally placed for people watching - and people in Paris this evening are looking exceptionally good. A beer is 9 euros. That's 2 days worth of decent food. There's no way you can do that. Rummaging around your pockets you find some coins and start counting. It's not looking so good. 20 cents, 25, 30, 40 - 46 cents. They won't even let you smell the coffee pot for that silly sum. You stand outside for a while, looking in at the lights and people of the café, and out at the Boulevard Montparnasse, keeping your ground. It's your corner now, you can stay there for as long as you want. So many wonderful people, looking so well dressed, full of style and joie de vivre. At home you have a good shirt, clean and decent pants, and a nice pair of shoes, just waiting to be worn. With a smile you think of the last time you wore them, a night of jazz at the Caveau de la Huchette that ended with someone needing to put your shoes back on for you.

Trudging home you admire a group of kids - 15 or 16 years old, maybe - drinking wine under some trees, looking silly and happy and yelling at eachother. Grinning, you come to think of Roberto Benigni in "La vita é bella" - such a wonderful figure - beautiful, beautiful. What a night! Now back to work, happy.

Angst

And there are the days where a sort of empty feeling of loneliness consumes you and makes you bored and unhappy and wanting to spend your last money in a café or bar, just so you can feel that there are people around you, talking and laughing and not being dead. You sit in your room, staring at something you've written or drawn, wondering if it's any good - if it's got worth - wondering if it'll ever be any good, and what kind of price you'll have to pay to get there. Reading Van Gogh's letters, mostly to his kind brother Theo, feeling his loneliness like you feel your own, looking at his sombre, earthy drawings from when he was about 30 and living God knows where - certainly not Arles. Always of poor people, people handling potatoes and peas and sitting on ragged chairs being tired. A man of the people, then.

There's no energy when you start feeling sad. You don't want to be miserable, and you certainly don't want to feel sorry for yourself, but it's still there, refusing to go anywhere but stay right here and now. You draw a self-portrait in the mirror. It's not very good, though better than your last, and even there your eyes and your mouth come out sad and tired, looking like you might cry any second now.

The noises in the street, the long seemingly never ending Boulevard Raspail, scare you. Are they looking for you? Do they remember you - and, did you in some crazy second give them your address, just so you could escape into the night? Not likely. The fear, the worldfear one might say, is never rational, never well founded and thought through. And you think someone has bitten you in the arm and given you some virus - even though the wound is too small, and would be only upper or lower teeth, not both. Who manages to pierce your flesh with only one of those two? You don't know, but your mind doesn't follow normal lines at this moment. It's got the fear in it now, and all you can do is ride it out, jousting with the windmills like our dear old Don Quixote of La Mancha (if only you had a Sancho Panza!).

You want a drink when it's like this, but you can't have one because then you'll have two - and once you've had two, you start feeling safe and warm and fuzzy and a third really can't hurt. Then the world is looking bright and funny, a good place to be, friendly and alive. Pretty soon the bottle is empty and you've ruined not only your chance at working well today, but probably tomorrow too. So you let that bottle of wine sit there, looking sullen and tempting like a naked girl who pretends she won't give you any even though you both know that's a lie.

She said she knew we'd have good sex that night as soon as we started discussing art. God knows why I started talking about art, I have nothing to say about it. Maybe my subconscious mind knew about the good sex but didn't bother telling me, as I'd screw it up if I knew. We fought about it. Battled it out like two alley cats. Certainly as drunk as a couple of alley dwellers. Atleast I was, but I always am when I'm feeling nervous. She was looking beautiful with that fuzzy black hair of hers and those cool grayish blue eyes. Not to mention the rest of her, of course. At some point I was screaming something or other, and I startled myself, because I don't talk about art. It's something I think about, to the point of obsession, but what is there to say about it? It is a tool with which I can communicate loneliness and fear without talking out loud, because no one ever understands what you're trying to say, Wittgenstein and all that.

And then you start writing something - a note in a makeshift diary perhaps to chase the fears, and for a good while it's working, letting you feel good about your words and the world. You can't draw when you're like this, because drawing is too slow and when you stop to be exact, you start thinking again, and then it all goes to hell and your drawings start to look bad. Trying to read some silly american crime novel doesn't work, but it gets you thinking: "what will I do when I've run out of both money and books?" You see yourself sitting in a chair staring at the wall, looking like a dunce - but then a new thought pops into that ever vigilant mind: "Why - I'll have to write more!" - and you laugh out loud, the sound echoing under the ceiling and leaving you a little happier.