It’s 4:14 PM in Cafe Koosje in the Plantage district of Amsterdam, a few tram stops out of the tourist-packed centre. I was always going to resist being fussy, just picking a local cafe, because the point was the work not the precisely intricate cafe details, but this place is brilliant and I’m working really well, quite as well as the original purpose impelling this trip. So let me ignore the last six days (I think they were okay) and talk about now.
And that is the context. Check out this Austin Kleon post that in turn references World of Tomorrow, a short film by Dan Hertzfeldt, and listen to our hero: “Now is the enemy of all of the dead.” Indeed. Today I went through, once again, my very first book chapter. It’s so familiar I can almost recite it, which makes it hard to edit, but, after initial hesitation, I’ve powered through and amped it up and I think it works.
Tomorrow the dead will witness me being the now.