It pays to write

In the city

Our writer awoke one morning, feeling as though a long time had passed. Grogginess fell over him like a plague, and it would take months for him to rehabilitate. He couldn't go to the club so much, much less the park bench or the city.

He searched for a snatch of revelation here or there, through shut windows in his home. Writing was of course his pastime still and his means of survival. It certainly paid to write but at time it felt better if there was nothing paid at all. Commerce was tiresome.

Commerce was exciting as well and our writer had written things about it. Even shut up at home, commercial activities whizzed through the air—vaporous, intangible. They happened and they made things happen. It was unfortunate at times: too much excitement going on.

Will it ever slow down? Our writer felt sometimes that commerce drove the markets to a fever that torched everything at its gates, arriving to do business. It's like a feeling of not being let in, voices would say. Though our writer communicated with the written word, and voices held little influence over his mind and work.

Removing commerce from the equation was delightful, and that's the arrangement our writer had at the club. It must have looked like a socialist enterprise to some, but it was a real harmonic way of doing business. No politics were involved. But in a world of feverish commerce where nothing could be sustained, our club started to sound like Utopia. And that would endanger it.

Our writer used the club to be compensated for his work, merely. Others used it to network and meet like-minded folk, engage in debate and advance discussion. It took a liberal perspective on writing and channeled it into deep waters where it was not to be afraid of drowning. No politics, but liberal. Liberal like philosophers and free-thinkers wanted it to be liberal.

But, sitting at home for so long, he lost touch with such sentiment. Really, the club was a place to do business as well. Perhaps our writer needed to take a closer look at his affairs. Get a few things in order. So that's what he did next, sitting at home, taking a week or two of a break from writing to order his affairs.