Mankind

Suddenly writing when you haven’t done it for a while is an odd experience. I’ll know by the end of this whether writing about random words is like the proverbial riding a bike, or whether it’s like riding an elephant: you remember the fundamentals but when it comes to trying to actually do it suddenly its prohibitively terrifying. I’ve been away a long time. When I say that, clearly I mean in the figurative sense, because like everyone else I’ve been absolutely nowhere this year. But in my head I’ve been everywhere, including a lot of bad places – but before you start to fear for the levity of this piece, nowhere I couldn’t get back from. Except I’m locked out of one room. It’s marked “Concentration.” It doesn’t matter how hard I try to get in, the door won’t budge. I don’t know if it’s locked, or if the frame has swollen up in the unseasonably warm weather, or if there are dextrous antelope on the other side hitting nails into the door to keep it shut, but the result is the same: I can’t access Concentration. But I will admit, I’ve only tried the door I can get to via Work. It’s the most obvious one, has the shiniest handle and the clearest signage, but I need to try a different way in. Now, someone once told me that there’s a crawl space under Work called Silliness. Most people go there and just twit around, but if you stick with it you can eventually get to a trapdoor under Concentration and work your way up from there. And once you’re in Concentration, you’re in, and it doesn’t matter how you got there. So while the world burns and mankind throws itself into the flames of chaos, here I am writing a silly thing in the hope that I can concentrate long enough to achieve something, anything, no matter how utterly worthless, as long as it lets me use my random word and possibly mention “squirrel sex”, because I just wanted to. So there we are. And here I am. It worked. I’m 350 words in and I haven’t checked my phone or looked out of the window or wondered what I’m having for dinner (though I am a little peckish, hmmm). The quality – which, let’s be honest, has seldom been the purpose of this endeavour – might not stand the test of time, but the test of mind has been stood upon, and it didn’t squish. Hurrah. Now, what’s for dinner?