For now, never alone again.

Writer's block manages its own paradox: at once, a self-indulgent condition that barely passes for an affliction, let alone a reality, whilst also managing to be a euphemism of sorts. It is not simply a block, rather an active assault, debilitating, ravaging all capacity and lucidity of mind. I shall wait, however, until I have experienced it myself before writing more on it, as the hiatus you and I have experienced over these long and unnecessary months apart resulted from wanton laziness on my part for which there can be little excuse. Nevertheless, far from excusing myself, I shall go one better and tell you that I don't care. I observed the intervening months of silence and passivity with just that, garnished with a liberal handful of indifference. Writing, one must remember, should never become a crutch. It is a luxury and not something one should come to host with tired mundanity, regularity, or the ingratitude that's borne out of over-familiarity. It is precisely upon this principle that freedom of speech must be reinforced, not to resolve it as a right, but as a privilege (its exercises becoming that much sweeter as a result, like a chocolate bar enjoyed without having been paid for). As Roberto Bolaño concludes in his curious text, Antwerp, a collection of prose-poetry that, taken in one long and stuttering dose, begins to resemble a novella.

Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I want to recover is the daily availability of my writing.

Quite so. As if intoning the severity of the future maladies that would cut short his life, Bolaño views the "availability" of writing as of paramount importance to his existence. Allowing for the nuances and quirks of translation, one questions what is meant by "availability". Whatever form the challenge to that availability takes, it must be met head-on, and here it begins.