bolometric

Two

 

He arrived at the downs and sank wearily into the fresh heather. Having barely slept the previous night, he sought solace in isolation. With his chin in his knees, he eyed the London panorama before him. The morning sky was so blue it pained him to look at it. There wasn't a single cloud diluting the image, either. The first initially latent dog walkers were now beginning to assemble sporadically on the downs, and the crisp morning air resonated with barking.

Sleep had deserted him because, in his experience, he considered it much more beneficial to work through the night hours. This new-found work philosophy did not posit well with others in the household, however. There may have been far too many distractions of all kinds in the daytime, but the canine pets still arose with their owners early in the mornings and successfully disrupted his daytime sleep patterns severely. He felt as if there was no way out, that he would be forever chained – at least ideologically – to an anti-creative lifestyle. To put it bluntly, the raw passion had been there a long time, but never before had he faced so many simultaneous obstacles: whether these were financial, physical or emotional in nature was of little relevance right now. What he did know was that these obstacles were slowly but surely draining him of the will to achieve.

At the back of his head was this concept of moderation. There were days when he felt himself so extremely off the scale that moderation would have appeared little more than a shooting star. And who decides the scale anyway? Society? If enough people participate in a particular activity does that make it genuine and 'alright'? ('Like binge drinking', he thought soberly) If few enough people participate does it automatically become a sickness, a fantasy, a delusion – grounds to throw them in a mental home and throw away the key? (Like murder? If more people were killers would the taboo aspect of killing be removed?) Some people won't go on an aeroplane without stress-reducing blankets, socks and pillows for fear of DVT. What the hell did these people do before the term DVT was even invented?

As one can see, this was a concept that especially frustrated him. He considered that all the geniuses of the past - the Einsteins, Curies and Newtons of this world – had to be eccentric on some intellectual level to derive and advocate their initially outrageous theories. Imagine if Einstein lived in modern times: would he have bothered tending to his theory of relativity if he was instead concerned with getting pissed six nights a week; (never mind, we'll sort you out a new liver just as soon as a hardworking scientist has invented the technology) closing in like a predator on a girl in a club; (perhaps a post-sex curry with the lads?) shopping at Tesco's; (oops, he's spent too much again…) wondering if he had the latest fashionable mobile phone… and then, as he lay back in the heather, the realisation came to him: ultimately we are concerned with the most asinine trivial matters that add up to nothing.