The train makes an additional stop at Hitchin. The travelers there are aligned in anticipation of a different spacing between the doors. Repetition and habit rule life. It’s important to find space around fixed tracks. Thoreau wrote about the opportunities for exploration within a ten-mile radius. The urge to travel is a symptom of maladjustment. The train is stuck by a red light and the driver calls in to say he can’t reach the signaler. Then he calls again to say that there has been a points failure. Workers in orange jackets wait on the sidelines after the last tunnel before the station. Familiar stations lie beyond my destination on a London Midlands service: Coventry, Tile Hill… Places of memory and imagination. How many places of the past will you never visit again? My neighbour wears a red top and silk trousers, she has a fan which she flicks open; a few flicks of the wrist, a last flick closes it. She is watching a drama on her screen, the screen is dirty and she …

Asked by the FT’s “Small Talk” whether he keeps a diary, David Vann responded: Never. I hate diaries and journaling and scrapbooking and all the fake writing in the world, including holiday cards and letter-writing. I wish it would all just die. I can’t even believe there are creative writing classes that focus on journaling, and I hate that I have to read “process” essays from my students. “Who cares?” is the only thing I can think when I read any of it. In her third Reith lecture Hilary Mantel tells the story of Stanislawa Przybyszewska who was obsessed by the French Revolution. She wrote about it day and night, neglected to care for her self and died as a martyr to her project. Susan Sontag said: ‘Somewhere along the line one has to choose between the Life and the Project.’ Stasia chose the Project. It killed her. Multiple causes of death were recorded, but actually she died of Robespierre. You don’t want to work like that, be like that. You hope your art will save …