An Ode to Laziness
Psychoexotical piece definitely influenced by Borges & SK.
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I journey down the hundred steps
but the street is still the very same
Leonard Cohen. Love Calls You by Your Name
Well, it is 6.33 p.m. I am sitting here writing this psychoexotical crap. In fact I fully realize the impossibility of fulfilling such a task — my mind is too empty to produce something creative. Nevertheless, I have to spend some forty minutes not falling asleep. You see — my room is occupied by my fanatical mother who really wants to watch TV. I thought of phoning somebody but the damn line is always engaged.
I will surely get nowhere if I continue writing that way. Hm, that gives me an idea. Imagine a writer who wants to invent a cool plot and transform it into a cool book. He takes a pen and starts with something like… Well, it is not my business, actually, to help him start his masterpiece. What I am talking about is laziness. The man has lots of thoughts, his head is an amazing warehouse full of dreams, hopes, desires, memories and ambitions. But when it comes to performing the art of storytelling he suddenly falls into a gentle catatonia. Picking something from a bunch of ideas becomes an irresistible hardship, the warehouse appears to have no exit. You can spend years gazing at treasures that are kept there, but you cannot take anything outside — it will not fit into a tiny crack in the wall, through which you plan to finally escape back to reality. So our hero just sits in a room staring at a blank sheet of paper. Then he understands that he has to write something, at least a pair of lines. If he does not — what the hell is he doing here? How can he be acquitted by the Jury (whoever they are) if he does not have evidence of the necessity of his existence? So our man curses his personal demiurge and begins to write. He does not know how to start, that is why his book begins with a description of reasons that led him to doing it right now. He may tell us something about the emptiness in his head, his beloved mother, who never understands a thing, his friends, who are always unavailable when he really needs help. Then he realizes that continuing that way will not be very productive. So he invents a character, a writer, perhaps, who has similar problems: fatigue and loss of creativity. These are depicted by means of cheap metaphors and pathetical proofs of total cruciality. The character begins to think of existential categories which comprise the aspects of some Jury that will definitely punish him for laziness — the sweetest of all deadly sins ever.
And now we reach the dramatical point here: our writer's character understands that he no longer is needed on this plane of reality. No way can he carry on living like that — poisoning the world with his verminous soul, that robs our existence of its colors sucking picturesque images through feelings, storing them deep down in the void which fills his head and never lets them come out again to make the universe rejoice at its own beauty in a natural orgy of boundless holy narcissism. After having created such a hero our writer begins to think of purposes and explanations concerning himself. He decides not to finish the tale — instead he goes to the bathroom and turns the water on. Then he takes a razorblade and stares meaninglessly onto the rising level of his last connection to this plane of reality.
Wow, I did not even think the story would be that large. Do not deny that you were tempted to think I would end up just like the two writers I had been telling about here. Man, I was tempted, too. But know what? Let us leave that to the guys who write about me. My mother has just finished watching TV. I am free to go and poison our world with full comfort. Besides, the phone has started ringing a couple of seconds ago, having restored a bit of my faith in humankind.
Well, it is 7.58 p.m. and I am creeping back. It has been a real pleasure, though.