The Writer

Monday morning and a new day is coming like a floating cloud, with nothing to do except for receiving the delivery person from the online supermarket, streaming some Judd Apatow movie, and gazing at the increasingly springlike sky, so I ask myself why not make the most of it and try to write some fiction, why not taste a little bit of writing today—now that the finally-finished PhD from last year won’t suffocate my imagination with the weight of literary theory anymore—, maybe a short story, a flash piece or, who knows, even a novel to publish in sequential installments in some obscure literary magazine or in a modest blog site, purpose I am inclined to follow after tiding up and wiping down the large glass table that dominates our living room, grabbing a Coke from the fridge to freshen my neurons, burning a vanilla-smelling incense stick in order to imbue the house with its pleasant odor, removing my slippers—after once reading that this was a daily ritual followed by Gabriel García Márquez himself—and after eventually booting up my MacBook Air and opening its word processor, moment in which I serenely realize, while staring at the blank screen in front of me, that I have nothing to write about, that no idea is going to occur to me as I myself am empty inside—slippery epiphany that coincides with the intercom’s sweet-sounding tone, a melody that my inner ear gratefully welcomes as it stands for another household chore that will keep me occupied for at least half an hour, maybe more.