(A subtle change in format of posts (see bottom) from now on, about which, a regular reader like you, might not need to be notified.)

The Holiday Break has just begun and the festive mood still evades my presence. The buildings at the University are now closed for a two week break which means limited access and no heat.

Outside, as snow pours relentlessly with flakes dotting my vision, inside, I find desolate corridors, darkened hallways, closed offices, empty restrooms, dusty door knobs, silent seats which were all once occupied by my colleagues. There is a false assuring humming sound of the workstations that were left running by them in haste as they escaped to their holiday, partner, home or life.

I ask myself why I have not been able to make much progress on what I had decided last time, but I find no answer. J.M. Coetzee helped to heighten this guilt and regret. Perhaps it awoke a quenched fire? But what is there was no fire at all? Ah, I digress and talk of things that make no sense.

Point? I have to get things straight. I have to get a lot of things done in these few days. Once the new semester begins everything will be sucked out. And I will be sucked in a hole that has no end. There will be scope for nothing but misery. I don't know if Coetzee's book is doing this to me, but I often think that my dream job would be a clerk or an assistant at a remote library of some distant town where I am required to arrange books and their shelves in far away sections where nobody bothers to look or trespass except that of a rare young couple whose presence will not cause much interference to that clerk lost in centuries of literature.

I pray for health this Christmas so that my dentist and physiotherapist stopped ruining this break. Because I can't let days pass by like this. I just can't. I must find time.

I must write.


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Current Book: "Youth" by J.M. Coetzee
Current Music: "Never Say Never" by Justin Beiber ft. Jaden Smith.