the short of it

All this thought of food is utterly distracting but he can’t stop the cinematic progression. Artichokes drizzled with lemony olive oil. Savory goat cheese with ash. Mussels in Thai curry sauce. Escarole in vinaigrette. Food as sustenance, that and the lusty bottles of Bordeaux. He thinks of his inspiration—the provocative films of Fassbinder and Sheridan, the rigorous designs of Frank Gehry and Zoltan Pali, the powerful works of Smith and Iglesias, the literary feasts of Nabokov and Roth…all the motivating forces coming together, attesting to the inferiority of his work. Always something wrong when everything is right. Why can’t he jimmy the lock on the past when everything seemed so simple... There were people, the ones you saw every day who were genuinely happy and then there were the ones who wanted to be seen by you. He plays out these scenes loop after endless loop until he recognizes the drift.