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    Living Companion
    Living Companion
    Living Companion
    Ebook224 pages4 hours

    Living Companion

    By Alexander Hicks

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    About this ebook

    "It is easy for her, I find myself observing and noting while standing in the middle of the black room now, not easy for painters in general, but for her, to produce a work of art. All she has to do is to feel up for it, take her brushes, start painting and some five or six hours later there is a work of art, perhaps not of particular class, yet art nonetheless. But it is so much harder for me, not for thinkers in general, but for me, to produce a written work. Irrespective of my feelings about it, seeing how I feel predisposed towards writing every day, I have to sit down and prepare myself, order and arrange everything around the desk and the shelves, check allocation all over, sort everything around me, the chair and all the notes, along the covers, go through the preparatory routine, place the paper correctly, preserve highest concentration, etc., and I have been doing all that for years now and still haven’t wrote a word. I could see myself, standing as I was in the black room, passing through the living room, on my way to the kitchen perhaps, or simply to rest, passing while my living companion was painting, throwing colors all over the white canvas, and while scrutinizing her at work I could notice her subtly noting, whispering, You haven’t published anything. That's what she would say in a barely audible tone, imperceptible almost, before turning around and repeating it in my face, Nothing, that’s what you’ve wrote so far, I could hear her saying, though she never said any of this, only I imagine her saying it constantly. She parades her ides on a canvas every few days, while I keep thinking of the first thought about the psychology poetry book to be written, sitting in my chair considering solutions and variations about possible beginning, all the while arranging the pencils on the desk before me. It is unbearable at times, I think to myself. "

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlexander Hicks
    Release dateSep 24, 2015
    ISBN9781310933936
    Living Companion
    Author

    Alexander Hicks

    Alexander Hicks spent his childhood in a small town dreaming not of the big wide world, but of playing the piano. After years of thinking how such desire would eventually come about, one day, having read a newspaper account of a chess match, a game he was not familiar in the least, he sat upon his desk and started writing a diary, first entry of which he titled "I can’t play the piano. And the same is with chess". Growing up, the list of things he wasn’t capable of kept gaining new entries, but so did his back room filled with scribbled pages. By the time he reached adolescence, though reserved in participation, he developed interest towards human behavior, an attraction he holds still and which prompted him to forward his efforts towards getting the better understanding of it. Undergoing studies he kept himself sparse of free time by devoting attention to literature and cinema, amid which he grew to appreciate the works of Kafka and Dostoevsky; Kieślowski and Lynch; among others, embracing the principle of thought as one bearing the strongest pull over him. Delving deeper into the art of thinking and sensibility, he maintained his fascination for people, embodying such an interest into a number of written works, and, indeed, into a few published ones as well. Allegedly, he often recalls cheerful memories of keeping a childhood diary, acknowledging that though the terrible list keeps growing, he never ceases attempts at slowing its progress. To this day he hasn’t learned to play the piano.

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