In memory of Tom Avital (Slywolf)

It was last winter, I was living at an inn near mountains with my wife. On that day, I gazed at the snow from the window as I sipped on my warm tea, while my wife sat behind me at her desk, writing poems.

Now if you knew anything about me, the author, you would know that there is no way that this was auto-biographical, and if you knew me well, you’d wonder if I had perhaps stolen that paragraph from somewhere, because the absolute contrast between the life of that person and mine would make you doubt whether I could even come up with that story. It would be practically the same as a four-year-old writing all about the hardships of people employed in working-class jobs.

Yet somehow I came up with that. I wonder whether that means that it’s a feasible reality? After all, if that four-year-old grows up to be a person struggling with his job, there’s no doubt he could write about it then. I think this means that in order to make any art about anything, you don’t necessarily need to have fully experienced what you made, but you would have had to at least possess some fragment of that in you, otherwise, you would be just as clueless as that four-year-old is on the working-class.

You and your wife making up a story, you take the opportunity to make it rude and scrutinizing towards your wife.

This argument seems to be self-evident too, people who make very dull art are typically dull themselves, and people who make very interesting art tend to be, surprise, very interesting people! Art is truly just a channeling of the person then, so whenever you praise someone’s art, whether you want to or not, you are praising the character of the artist themselves.”Separate the art from the artist” could never be more wrong, then!

Now if we fully entertain this obscure argument, then perhaps I should then continue with this story, writing to be the happiest story imaginable. This would prove to me then maybe there’s still a fragment of possible happiness for me! Alright then, my precious reader, enough talking, let us go on as I attempt at my ideal reality.

“Show me those poems”

“They’re not ready yet!”

“Fine, how about an impromptu poem competition?”

“Sure! What’s the subject?”

“Uh, whatever, I don’t know.”

“Okay. How much time do we have?”

“5 Minutes.”

The timer began and I began to ponder.

Ah, the weather? The wind? Life? Death? Whatever, I’ll just put words on the paper.

Now reader, since my own story that i wrote with the intent to paint my ideal reality seemed to have somehow still turned out far less than ideal, you may be asking yourself whether i seemed to fail, even with all my effort, to create myself such a hopeful reality, or whether maybe, this hopeless reality, was all I yearned for from the beginning? Your guess is as good as mine. So long.

I have no motivation to write, though somehow, I found just enough to be able to sit down today and write this story. What I did was, I lit a candle, with a promise to myself, I would write until the flame extinguishes. The candle however, has long been lit, as I have gone back even on this simple promise. But from this point on, I really would write, until the last flame. I say this with a warning though, my lack of motivation will probably make it so that i will not write even a single character after the candle extinguishes, so if the story is far from completion by the time the candle does extinguish, you have been warned.

(while the story goes on, you update on the state of the candle, at some point its flickering, as if about to die. and you say that though you have some plans for the story, you might not be able to finish them in time, you wonder whether to wrap it up differently.) at the end, the story finishes mid-character, making an uncompleted word, that if it were to be completed, would have an entirely different meaning.