Then and Now:
I was talking to a friend of the yesteryears after our paths crossed rather unexpectedly. He said, “Once I harbored, was intoxicated on fuming, highfalutin writerly aspirations. I’ll crush it; I’ll chart my own uniquely resplendent path. Ages ago: that’s true. In some bleak eon sunk in a dilapidated interstice of yore, far removed from my current landscape, now that I think about it. My heroin of choice, of dreary comfort that I savored sniffing in the interminably vast swathes of time I was left with after being done for the day with the yawning, relatively sinecure, Kafkaesque day-job that I drew sustenance from, or rather which sustained me, prevented me from going completely bonkers etc.
That was once. What has altered since then? Far too many upheavals to mention here. A tectonic shift, if you will. My gruff and obstinate self has relatively mellowed, to the treacly remnants of my past. Yet, it isn’t easy to completely purge the recidivist streaks. I do cave in at times, can barely resist, for it can indeed get a tad too overwhelming. I start day-dreaming, consumed with a fervid desire to be the amanuensis of someone who has the gift, the panache, the idiom, the verbal flourishes, the sinuous ebbs and flows. Wait, or, purge all that, just the wistful longing to see one’s word in print shall suffice. My demure marrow wants to be instructed, bossed around even. Better if by a disgruntled significant other, a somnolent spouse even, where all professional boundaries have been annexed. I’m condemned to having as my forte, what but, immaculately wrapping up thankless tasks without a ruffle. I’m ever-ready to self-abnegate myself if it aids in making you sparkle brightly. Make me your Véra Nabokov or Leonard Woolf is my new pickup line, even if it doesn’t work too often.” We separated without a fuss.
