I have long thought that we build continuity into the world because we, ourselves, lack it entirely.

The wildest passions exist to be extinguished. They cannot exist permanently, for in so doing they would outlive us. We would be integrated into them, just as we are integrated into abstract things - things we have created ourselves - such as society. We long for that sense of permanence because we fear loss, yet it is precisely the sense of loss which drives us! A novel ravishes our intellect because, before it existed, we were ripe for it. It cannot do so again, for in the act of reading we plant seeds which will blossom when we read another; and I believe the same follows for all emotion. We love only so that we may love again, but with greater fervour! We kiss so that we may reach that blissful moment when we stop, when the lips part and we realise that the kiss, which is everything, will never be enough!

Mercilessly lonely, I write these worthless parodies of beautiful literature in the tranquil early hours in the full knowledge that, in the shattering light of day, I shall no longer be the same person. Indeed, the very act of writing soothes the tumultuous collisions of my contradictory thoughts, it eases the sea-sickness of my soul and holds me upright, so that I may rest. Tomorrow, my face will crack in more or less the same fashion when I automatically acknowledge my neighbour as I do each morning; my voice will still waver when I buy the newspaper at my local shop and I consider asking the chap who has served me there for seven years how he is, before burying the question in my larynx. It has been seven years and each day that I did not ask re-inforced the unacceptability of even considering it. In short, my exterior being, the 'self' which our noisey and brutally insecure society takes as for a person's whole, will change little. Yet the raging passion of thought, that indescribable phantasma which took me by the hand and lead me out of Life and into being - my private state of utter sadness - will be written out like a bad soap character. Writing is my constant, the state of permanence others see in relationships, or novels.

I am gagged and bound by self-knowledge. I cannot conduct a conversation without realising that it is simply another way for me to be alone. I impose the most wonderful of literary touches on people because I can; it is not that I believe others revolve around me and my private thoughts. I just feel separate. My wallowing is harmless; after all, unlike the fantasists of literature, I expect nothing from Life. I am more than content with the vulgar and alluring apparition of it all.

I write, and I am placid - like a river, shimmering in the dolorous sunlight, winding its gentle and inevitable way towards the eternal ocean with a serene restlessness. The pen drops, and the seeds are planted.