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After finally acquiring a laptop I can do the two things I love at once; travel by train and writing.
Around me, the bored faces of fellow travelers stare out like huge flesh colored deep-sea fish, eyes bulging stupidly, seeing and yet somehow obviously blind to their surroundings.
I write the odd line every once in a while, but mostly I peer over my screen and watch my neighbors, making eye contact only to see which side will nervously break it first, scowling at myself when I fold and smiling inwardly when I win this obviously meaningless test of will.
I am moving north. I regard my writing as a form of meditation. I am frustrated. My thoughts are neither clear nor collected, much like the sea these eye-bulging creatures around me probably inhabit daily.
I try to make sense of the brown nicotine stained mud that my consciousness is traveling through. What is it that I want, ultimately? Why do I bother? Where is all this taking me? And is this ride north going to solve anything? Will I find a lighthouse to guide myself by in this thickening smog of confusion and ever accumulating facts and experiences?
I need to be alone.
I've lost all possible leads in this impossible case I've been working on.
I've given up on counting the sleepless caffeine soaked nights I've spent trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, so I do what always works for me when all else fails.
I write a story. I pretend it is fiction and that the ideas are my own. But somehow, the imaginary detective in my story is clean of worries and inhibitions. He is not afraid to make false assumptions and to take fantastic risks.
He waltzes on the sludge I've waded through, charismatically convinces the witnesses I've begged and knows all the facts I've researched imperfectly by heart.
And he, being the protégée that he is, never gets stuck. Unlike me, he can make sense of the puzzle, no matter how slight the lead.
All I have to do is feed the information through the computer to him, and he’ll usually work it out.
But this time, it seems like nothing I do really works.
The detective knows all the pubs relevant to this case, he's traveled with the bike gang all the witnesses are from as a younger man and studied the required chemistry and anatomy in order to fully understand the workings of the applied poison, but all to no avail. It seems he's stumbled on a crime orchestrated by an even greater mastermind than himself.
Every move in the direction of a solution is almost immediately brought to a dead end, and soon, I find myself more interested in writing fictional stories with this fantastic character I've created than in solving the case. I've been writing him for so long it seems he has a life of his own, and that he's not very interested in the case, either.
If only I could really meet such a detective and ask for his counsel. What sort of advice would he give me? What questions would he ask?
After finally acquiring a laptop I can do the two things I love at once; travel by train and writing.
Around me, the bored faces of fellow travelers stare out like huge flesh colored deep-sea fish, eyes bulging stupidly, seeing and yet somehow obviously blind to their surroundings.
I write the odd line every once in a while, but mostly I peer over my screen and watch my neighbors, making eye contact only to see which side will nervously break it first, scowling at myself when I fold and smiling inwardly when I win this obviously meaningless test of will.
I am moving north. I regard my writing as a form of meditation. I am frustrated. My thoughts are neither clear nor collected, much like the sea these eye-bulging creatures around me probably inhabit daily.
I try to make sense of the brown nicotine stained mud that my consciousness is traveling through. What is it that I want, ultimately? Why do I bother? Where is all this taking me? And is this ride north going to solve anything? Will I find a lighthouse to guide myself by in this thickening smog of confusion and ever accumulating facts and experiences?
I need to be alone.
I've lost all possible leads in this impossible case I've been working on.
I've given up on counting the sleepless caffeine soaked nights I've spent trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, so I do what always works for me when all else fails.
I write a story. I pretend it is fiction and that the ideas are my own. But somehow, the imaginary detective in my story is clean of worries and inhibitions. He is not afraid to make false assumptions and to take fantastic risks.
He waltzes on the sludge I've waded through, charismatically convinces the witnesses I've begged and knows all the facts I've researched imperfectly by heart.
And he, being the protégée that he is, never gets stuck. Unlike me, he can make sense of the puzzle, no matter how slight the lead.
All I have to do is feed the information through the computer to him, and he’ll usually work it out.
But this time, it seems like nothing I do really works.
The detective knows all the pubs relevant to this case, he's traveled with the bike gang all the witnesses are from as a younger man and studied the required chemistry and anatomy in order to fully understand the workings of the applied poison, but all to no avail. It seems he's stumbled on a crime orchestrated by an even greater mastermind than himself.
Every move in the direction of a solution is almost immediately brought to a dead end, and soon, I find myself more interested in writing fictional stories with this fantastic character I've created than in solving the case. I've been writing him for so long it seems he has a life of his own, and that he's not very interested in the case, either.
If only I could really meet such a detective and ask for his counsel. What sort of advice would he give me? What questions would he ask?