I haven’t felt much like writing throughout this holiday. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but it feels as though something is missing. Motivation, I guess, or passion, or something along those lines. 

I have been romanticising things as I usually do. Espressos, cigarettes, playing cards, white wine, nice meals, pretty views, beautiful men. It rained non-stop on Sunday, but other than that, the weather has been perfectly acceptable. Sunny, not hot, but pleasantly warm, a bit too windy, but not enough to bother me. 

I suppose I’ve been ruminating too much, one of my fatal flaws. It annoys me because they are often situations that I can do little to change, even if I wanted to, which I often don’t. Going round and around in circles, tiring myself out, replaying the same scenarios, coming to the same decisions, changing my mind, changing it again, achieving nothing at all.

Untitled 1 is a strange name for a document, is it not? Cold, lifeless, lacking intimacy. You could write absolutely anything you wanted in a document called Untitled 1, and no one would ever know.

I struggle to absorb information when I listen to audiobooks. I also struggle to retain interest when I read the digital version of the newspaper on my iPad. There is something underrated and substantial about the printed word, and it seems to lose its importance when spoken or pixelated.

All that we have is the present. The past is undefinable, the future is unpredictable. There is no such thing as the past, not in any coherent sense anyway. Every single person on this lonely planet will have a different understanding and interpretation of what happened last Wednesday, so how can you possibly draw any conclusions from it? All that we have is the present, and even that is fleeting – constant, but fleeting.

I want to down a bottle of wine and go dancing with my friends. I want someone to hold me and tell me that everything will be OK. I want to tell my Grandfather that I love him, and that spending these last few weeks with him has been a pleasure that I’ve never known before. I want to quit my job and paint. I want to sell my car and buy a moped. I want to play golf every day for the next three weeks in a row. I want to travel across Italy, drink lots of coffee and wine, and fall in love with an enigmatic Russian man. I want to be alone, I want to be surrounded. I want to understand, and I want to be understood. I want to be alive.

Words can never do justice to how one feels at any given moment. As beautiful as they might be, they will never be enough. I cannot remember my past, and I cannot imagine my future. Stranded in the present, the thing that is all that we have. 

We have a dinner reservation for 7pm at a restaurant that we like. The waiters are all young Turkish men, some attractive, some less so, but all lovely. Perhaps the meaning of life is to just try and figure out how to spend the time you have left before your next dinner reservation? Without even knowing it, someday soon, it will be the last reservation you ever make.