You may think I was going completely crazy at this point too. I wasn't. It's just that I couldn't see the point in continuing on with anything literary, and therefore, my other artistic pleasures, like listening to records or watching films, also evaporated. It all seemed part of the same conspiracy. I was sick of art. I didn't have a trade, didn’t like sport, or felt like studying anything. I suppose you're thinking that 33 isn't old, that I've got an abundance of time. True, but it's a difficult concept to consider living another fifty years and feel that I've completed my best work at the only thing I ever really wanted to do. People say you're far too young for this to happen…but so many people never recapture the magic of their early work. They keep on doing it and their later efforts just take on an air of sad inconsequence. Some of them know it but what else can they do?
Am I a self-pitying fool? Why don't I just go off and work for charity, enrol in the army, find a job on a farm, or head for a monastery? Well, the truth is, lots of people think of these things at one stage or another in their lives, but very few have the strength to do it. No. When I appraise all my days (yes, that’s a rhyme), my happy moments were after a good session of writing. I could face the world with a clear lightness.
