I Don't Believe In God, But I

There Is A German Word, Sehnsucht, Which Has No English Equivalent; It Means 'the Longing For Something'. It Has Romantic And Mystical Connotations; C.s. Lewis Defined It As The 'inconsolable Longing' In The Human Heart For 'we Know Not What'. It Seems Rather German To Be Able To Specify The Unspecifiable. The Longing For Something - Or, In Our Case, For Someone.

The Imagination Doesn't Crop Annually Like A Reliable Fruit Tree. The Writer Has To Gather Whatever's There: Sometimes Too Much, Sometimes Too Little, Sometimes Nothing At All. And In The Years Of Glut There Is Always A Slatted Wooden Tray In Some Cool, Dark Attic, Which The Writer Nervously Visits From Time To Time; And Yes, Oh Dear, While He's Been Hard At Work Downstairs, Up In The Attic There Are Puckering Skins, Warning Spots, A Sudden Brown Collapse And The Sprouting Of Snowflakes. What Can He Do About It?

The Better You Know Someone, The Less Well You Often See Them (and The Less Well They Can Therefore Be Transferred Into Fiction). They May Be So Close As To Be Out Of Focus, And There Is No Operating Novelist To Dispel The Blur.

When You’re Young You Prefer The Vulgar Months, The Fullness Of The Seasons. As You Grow Older You Learn To Like The In-between Times, The Months That Can’t Make Up Their Minds. Perhaps It’s A Way Of Admitting That Things Can’t Ever Bear The Same Certainty Again.

I Had Wanted Life Not To Bother Me Too Much, And Had Succeeded - And How Pitiful That Was.