from Journal
January 31
1990
Last revised
April 26, 2008
Author's note - Written in Quebec City
when I was much younger. At the time I didn't yet have
a 'serious' job or profession; I lived for adventure, travel,
literature and inspiration.
When I
find myself face to face with the everyday, practical, realistic sort of
person, and they ask me about my life, about what I do but especially
what I am going to do (they
always put it in exactly those terms), I feel that their very presence
obliterates my entire personal world, and that I must really be as I
surely appear to them – impractical, unrealistic, unenterprising, too
idealistic, timid, or whatever.
I try
to recall my world but it has vanished – dreams, art, love, insight,
inspiration, everything has disappeared or as if been reduced to a tiny
keepsake, like some trinket of fake jewellery. And I shrink in my chair
and try to answer without flinching ‘what I am going to do’, and I try
to phrase my reply in the language of their world. It never comes
off very well, they can tell I’m making it up as I go
along.
But
sometimes they’re still curious, because they can sense that my mind and
my life aren't empty. In fact I’m on fire. And when I have two minutes to
recover after the interrogation is over and they have removed the big
white spotlight from my face, my world returns in a silent rush of
feeling and colour, and I don’t regret that I’m not more like them, with
their minds full of business and money and social expectations, and
their hearts longing with dull pain or even beginning to dry
out.
But
how do I know that? I can’t presume to understand their lives, feelings,
aspirations, any more than they do mine. But so often their eyes seem so
listless and disappointed ... Or maybe only in the presence of people
like me, with our probing
spotlights?