Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

The Dark Nights are Drawing In

Another excerpt from my paper and pen diary:



21st Sep, 2004

Have started wearing my coat to go outside. It is definitely autumn.

Every time I read some more of The End of Nature, I fall into a terrible black mood. Today has been the same.

It also seems to me that I will never be published by a major publisher. In a sense reading the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook is just as depressing as The End of Nature. I seem to recall someone describing Burroughs as the last true writer; all that is left for us now are the career writers. Well, there are real writers left, it’s just that no one publishes them anymore. Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, and other publications of its ilk, are now unashamedly geared towards the sickening crew of smug careerists.

All my dreams have come to nothing. I am growing old alone in a world that is ending. What is this if it is not a nightmare?

How can I care about anything now? I look out of my window at a cold and darkening world. No one comes to visit. The day ends soundlessly, and I am tired.

Death – yes, walking along by the river today I longed for death; the death of the ego that we are told is the end of suffering. What do I have left to lose? I am ready, but it does not come. No, I still have my life to live.

Alone by the window with my thoughts… At least I should let my thoughts run free. There is nothing else for me in the time I have been given. And if no one comes to keep me company, at least it means that no one will trouble themselves if my thoughts stray too far. I have only my own thoughts to answer to.

And if the darkness outside my window seems especially terrible, it is because, even in such quiet there is death. Nothing much is happening, but death is just beyond the glass. ‘Nothing much’ begins to assume its own kind of terror when you realise that is all that stands between you and death. Nothing much – my life this evening and all my life will ever be. But one day death will come. At least death will embrace me. At least death will deign to come into my heart.