Nearly a year. A year nearly. Lost and gone.
The last thing I want to tell you in this part is about my desk. For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room - no more child's desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rental house. In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study (it's a converted stable loft at the rear of the house). For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship's captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere.A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put in a living-room suite where it had been, picking out the pieces and a nice Turkish rug with my wife's help. In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza. They usually left a boxful of crusts behind when they moved on, but I didn't care. They came, they seemed to enjoy being with me, and I know I enjoyed being with them. I got another desk - it's handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T. rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave. That eave is very like the one I slept under in Durham, but there are no rats in the walls and no senile grandmother downstairs yelling for someone to feed Dick the horse. I'm sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I'm doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. I came through all the stuff I told you about (and plenty more that I didn't), and now I'm going to tell you as much as I can about the job. As promised, it won't take long.
It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.
--Stephen King, On Writing
When I grow up I be going to be the first man to live for ever and ever. In my opinion, you don't have to die. Not unless you want to. And I byunt never going to want to. Not me. When I grow up I be going to leave the light on all night. I be! No matter bloody what. I be going to have books. I be going to have books. All over the - on shelves, mind. I be going to have a shelf just for books. When I grow up I'm - I be going to have a whole tin of evaporated milk on a whole tin of peaches I be! I bloody be, mind! I bloody buggering bloody damn buggering be! Oy. And I shall cuss. I'm going to - I'll tell tha what - When I grow up I'm - When I grow up -Everything will be all right. When I grow up, everything - There'll be none of - there'll be no - Everything ool be all right. Won't it?
--Dennis Potter, The Singing Detective
The actual leavetaking of the company on the last night fiercely eschews sentimentality. The formula is that we'll meet again soon - as we very likely will, at Joe Allen's, or in the street, or at the dole. 'Have you got anything to go to?' we ask each other, quickly passing on if the answer's no. All the little jokes which have grown up around various members of the company are reiterated. Despite the pressing business of shoving boxes and bags into taxis there's a reluctance, a la Chekhov, to actually go. You feel the company should have got together more often, should have seen more of each other, and now it's all over...In fact, the whole thing's quite unreal. How can you conceive, there, inside the building that has been your focus for all these weeks or months, that on Monday life will be quite different. You can't; and it isn't till weeks later that you're aware of any loss.--Simon Callow, Being an Actor
You look at lykens on a stoan its all them tiny manyings of it and may be each part of it myt think its sepert only we can see its all 1 thing. Thats how it is with what we are its all 1 girt big thing and divvyt up amongst the many. Its all 1 girt thing bigger nor the worl and lorn and loan and oansome. Tremmering it is and feart. It puts us on like we put on our cloes. Some times we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the arm hoals and it tears us a part.--Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins.--J.J.
Dear. Thanks K. for saying so. We all together now:
