Tosh's Journal: December 4

Come on, world, inspire me! There are occasions in my life when I have to check the mirror by putting my nose close to it, to see if I’m still breathing. The room I’m in right now was built for consistent inspiration. There is a turntable on one corner with two gigantic speakers, and a window looking over Astro’s Diner on Fletcher and Glendale Boulevard. The bookcase is filled with books that I haven’t looked at in years.  Yet, the spines of these books are laid out to inspire my writing sessions. But now, a sense of failure is creeping up on me, like a weed in an outside potted plant - it comes alive when you try to ignore it. The traffic noise outside is an unfluctuating reminder of a life that is spent indoors. What do I know of the world, except whatever is through my window, and what record is on my turntable? Other than that, I’m clueless.



“I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.” The fear of time passing, and just thinking of time as this abstract body of matter makes me fearful. I feel that “body” looking over my shoulder as I write, and the solitude I crave is not from the people in general, but time itself. I somehow woke up as a teenager, and somehow went to bed that same day as a senior. I don’t even want to think about tomorrow.



Gérard Philipe, the eminent French actor, was 37 when he died from liver cancer. His doctor never informed him that he was that ill, so he worked on, except one can notice fatigue in his facial expressions. He shared that fatigue with another actor in his last film, “Les Liaisons dangerousness” –Boris Vian, who that same year also died, but from a lifetime heart problem. Both had the same look as they were prepared to leave the room, and they couldn’t go fast enough. Time is fundamentally essential, and you have to either trick it or not let it take possession of your life. The sensibility of time is very much being stuck in a narrative, perhaps not of your own choice. Concerning time there is an end, but when? That is the essence of time itself. Otherwise, “life is one long process of getting tired.’



The mental journey from one end of my living room to the other side is a lifetime to me. I go through emotions like one changes pj’s during night sweats. “Extreme joy and extreme sorrow are indistinguishable beyond a certain point.” All I know is that I have to finish my writing and not let time take it away from me. I will take it, not time. “Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further.” - Tosh Berman