screen blinks vanishes

It's a tragedy, having insight. But to make that claim unpretentious I'll have to explain with a story.

Imagine, if you will, a guy, lets call him Bob, who considers himself of average intelligence, average ambitions, average abilities. Now, you realize if the statistics are true that the average person will rate themselves as above average in questionnaires. Let's assume that's true of Bob too. so when he says average, he means a little bit more. Just like you?

Travelling into Bob's youth, we notice the usual triumphs, mistakes and humiliations. Schoolyard hazing and experiments with crime. So far, so average.

Now comes the big left hook, the road less travelled having made all the difference and all that.

Bob decides he wants to be a writer, how and why? The attention? The comforts of academe? Only Bob knows.

So Bob thinks about how his favourite writers got to where they are, way before Bob discovers there is even the concept of modelling behaviour, Bob chances on the notion. Even though his favourite writers don't always know how they do what they do, Bob will simply live how they lived.

The writing should emerge from the living. Life is a support system for art? Or the other way around? Bob never remembers which way the quotation swings.

Now many years later, having lived here and there, up and down, importantly in and out, Bob realizes he has something to say.

Too much to say in fact, everytime he gets his grips on a topic it mushrooms and associates out of control.

Bob has coherence, Bob has cohesiveness, Bob does not have the courage to cut the story short.

Put another way, all Bob's hard won insights are interconnected so tightly that he can't always capitalize on them himself, let alone cut one or two free in any viable form.

But he keeps trying.

Shouldn't he keep trying?