November 13

You’ll have seen (and I said “You” because I need to practice my capital Y’s) how effective I’m finding these exercises as a way of settling the mind and readying it for the day ahead. Because of this, it’s a serious error to begin the day with any other kind of work (those infernal crosswords, for instance) and leave these wholesome exercises for a future moment, which sometimes never comes, or comes too late.

There was a time, not so long ago, when my daily handwriting exercises seemed on the verge of becoming literary exercises instead. I was very tempted to turn my calligraphical prose into narrative prose, with the idea of building a series of texts that, like the steps of a staircase, would carry me back up to those longed-for heights I was once able to reach. But the Devil invariably sticks his hoof in. He’s always crouching out of sight somewhere, peering into the heart of Man, and he chose that moment to dangle a (temporary) job in front of me that would help me save up some money—something I needed to do to stay on top of things, clear my debts, and be left with a reassuring sum in my pocket. So I took the job, and that was the end of my resolve to write, and even, for a few days, of these exercises. Coming back to them now, I once again feel the urge to write something. To write and be published. I need to see my name in print—my real name, the one I use when I write, and not the one I was given. And more, much more, than that, I want to get in touch with myself, with the miraculous being that lives inside me and is able, among so many other extraordinary things, to fabricate interesting stories and cartoons. That’s the point. That’s what it’s all about. Reconnecting with the inner being, the being which is part, in some secret way, of the divine spark that roams tirelessly through the Universe, giving it life, keeping it going, and lending reality to what would otherwise be an empty shell.

November 15