Leave job possible reality:

• 1 hour running every day like Murakami.
• 1 hour foreign language every day.
• Start that business.
• Cook every day.
• Pick up kids after school.
• All house jobs completed.
• House painted.
• Novel published.

Alternate reality:

• Slobbing.
• Weight gain.
• Depression.
• Paranoia.
• Suicide.

Alternate reality:

• Another job comes along.

You see the day and I see the line that refracts from your eye to mine through the glowing darkness. We share an ambition but mine is clearly more relevant. Stand back and let me see what you’ve done there.

No, I don’t understand what you mean with these interactions. The idea here is we’re trying to create things which have reference to the past, a story, a key point, but they also draw in new elements. Take for example a Tarantino film – loving in its legacy and yet tightly bound within key constraints which keep us engaged. He weaves anachronisms and stylistic metaphors into his routines. But these are no mere accidents or peccadilloes. This is his style? Do you see how that would work for you in your day to day? You take a step back and the distance between kerb and street is not so far – you step into the world of the car and the tram and you wonder what will happen outside these boundaries. Perhaps you are warned off by a policeman, a ticket inspector, a passing bakerist. What would those people have done if you hadn’t come into their lives? What interaction are you trying to convey when you get up in the morning? Is that the dress you would have picked out if you were on holiday, been dumped, had a financial windfall? What are the extremes and what are the median points?

Is there actually time left to prove ourselves anymore? Can we put that much thought into the series of events that make up a life? Think damn you. Your reputation rides on this and your reputation in this enigmatic market is only as good as your last inconsequential performance.

Now you can roll on to your back. You can view the sky as it’s meant to be viewed – as a proper reflection of your place on this Earth. When you see the clouds and the gulls and the high planes and satellites passing you steadily as you float and dip and crane your neck to keep them in view and use your limbs to balance your body as it floats steady on the surface. Nights pass and the world closes around you but soon enough the sun comes around again and seeing the sky glowing and the waters calm the theatre of your imagination is once again engaged.

Your rested state allows you to pursue your fancies. You mind is free from those islands of worry, from the perception of fear. Your thoughts turn to earlier freedoms and those friends of yours who have made this journey before. Long ago, you were chief amongst them, bold and unafraid. You showed no fear of the rough seas, the fortified encampments, the terror of the battle, the emptiness of defeat. And then steadily you solidified your path – you steeled your emotions – you focussed your attentions and your battles became strategic rather than visceral and raw. You left your youth behind still standing with long hair and a cigarette and you doubled your efforts and doubled them again taking final recourse to proper exploration and pride and effort in your travails. You created detailed maps of movements, troop plans, supply lines. You moved with generals and commanders and yet you marvelled at their single mindedness. You see them as pure application without flair and yet you underestimated their tenacity. Your template was a flawed one to follow and now you drift as if without idea. Ready for landfall but afraid of the implications.

Yet you float ever onward and feel the mighty swell of water beneath you. Dark depths and uncharted wrecks, monsters that once made you stutter in terror now give you strength not to fear or to lay becalmed or to postpone those ideas that once you never entertained.

There is a great loathing upon this land. The marks that define your eyebrows are buried beneath the sand but I can see your wrinkled forehead adopting a pose of stoic indifference. A waiting for your fate. A wait for your deliverance perhaps from the words that bind you. Waiting in time for the moments to elapse. These are your words and your fate and you have burnt them into yourself. You buried your body here. You allow it to flow around you as the tides and the winds came and went. The hard grasses float upon the shifting layers but your weight holds you steady and those mites, once insignificant, have piled their weight around.

I saw you come and I saw you settle as I have seen others mightier come and go. Vast reaches of this shoreline are marked with their history and yet all softens and levels in time.

I have been here watching you and I too have grown weary of this land. My ears are dull, my sight is feeble. My feet once buried now are free and soon the tide comes to lift me away. I cannot stop it and have no will. I have no fear of the sea behind me – it will come to pluck and carry my body across the threshold of the breakers and into the deep green. From there I will see you dwindle and decay as ocean tips and spins me end over end.