When I was small, before drinking and men and the rest, books were the thing that could absorb me entirely and let me forget myself. I had liked the idea of making something for someone else to do that in. It seemed like the only thing I might have a real desire to do. That was a long time ago, of course, and now it seemed borderline incomprehensible to me that someone could dedicate so much time and effort to a thing without a known outcome. Life was so pointless, so opaque and shifting, that I could only think about immediate feelings. Immediacy was all I had.
