What is up with this summer? These days I procrastinate and immerse myself in the trivialities of the Internet until nightfall, when I realize that I have done nothing. Or I just want to go out when the sun decides to stay, and fish and bike and discuss rugby with friends while drinking beer under a tree. Then I tell myself, tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I will do something! I have essays to write and books to read, things to obsess about! But it's the same as usual the next day: me, at 35, still a child, new to the world, indulging in its virtual or sensuous delights.

Part of my trepidation about beginning is due to a fear that my work will expose me as a fraud. It will reveal that all I ever had to offer was hot air and nothing else. So I avoid work, in the pursuit of delight. Yet the partaking of delights, with nothing to offer of myself, is a hollow act. Such enjoyment is limited. It asks nothing of myself, and in turn I know nothing of the world, only its shimmering surfaces.

What should I do instead? Perhaps, paradoxically, I must continue to do some of the things I do, only with critical distance. �Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."- Susan Sontag

In eagerness, it is hoped, I will return again to pen and paper, to summon again the words that have burrowed underground, biding the time of their emergence.

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