the difficulty of thought

I went to the cable-ski park yesterday night to sit at the far edge of the water and demanded to be left alone. It might not have been the right thing to do. But it is not the wholeness of disappointment that makes it so strangled and gasping, halving it wouldn't do any good. Time, yes. Time will eat away at its roots.

I was certain that then, I was still thinking. And I might have found a rational answer, but I lost any memory of it after fifteen hours of long, disturbingly dreamless sleep. I thought that I had work to return to, other commitments to bury my self in. For a few hours I walked around the house, flipping Saturday's papers and stopping abruptly at a report on the G-20. I watched television, put on a CD, played a computer game but nothing seemed to help.

At 3PM in the afternoon I was still in my pyjamas. Then I remembered all I had to do was read. I picked up Chocolat, finished it where I left off and that gave me some hope. I did Matilda after that, and I'm a hundred eighty-eight into Ruth Reichl. With every page I was in Paris, the gypsy boats, in the English kitchen with the paraffin stove. In the past hour I've been to a French feeding camp, Arab teahouses in Tunisia, Michigan to New York and back again.

It lifted me a little, but only when I look at the text on sullied pages, printed on straight, comforting lines and I know, that they cannot run far.

I came to write because the chawanmushi is still on the stove, and I still have work to do.

How long does it take to change your reflexes?
How long will it take for you to realise a calling?