Initiating is the cruelest of tasks. The would be actor meditates deeply on how to proceed. Anxieties awash his thoughts. Failure, that perpetual inevitability, hangs perilously over every action. He normally freezes and abstains, allowing others to initiate. He was swept along by the decision of another. One day the young man awoke to revelation: his life, if afforded any meaning, must actively pursue rejection, persecution, solitude, and exile.
The young man sat at his unused desk and began to write. He would not leave it until he finished that perpetually deferred work. A week later, after a diet of only bread and water, he completed the task. He did not give the text another look. It was good. It was bad. Most importantly, it was done. He sent it out and awaited the vertiginous recognition he had evaded all his life.
Criticism, especially that of acrid kind, affirms. Dismissal confirms. He craved confirmation. In the past, their eyes unmade him. Their words tore him with voracious malice. Just words, he was told. They're just words. No. Whether kind or offending, all words directed his way were shrapnel. Now, he wanted to lay bare. He expected neither exaltation or infamy. He wanted the recriminations. He wanted their words now.
But, silence, he did not expect silence. No response. The portfolio of rejection letters he had crafted laid barren. Weeks and weeks passed, silence grew unbearable. He sent out another round, this time with a note attached.
"To whom it may concern, this manuscript is utter tripe. I neither want it read, much less published. If you may attach a consolatory letter - "Thank you for your submission, but we're sorry to inform you..." - I would be forever grateful."
Months passed. The note helped very little. Still silence. The young man realized the delivery itself was flawed. The lines of communication were exclusively spectral. He needed to return reality to its material past. He left his home, text in tow, and ventured to an office he had sent two copies of the text to. He entered the iridescent halls of a life forever beyond his reach and saw the betrayal on the wall. It was the cover of a publication. It was his title, his work, with another's name. His head sunk into his chest. He searched for rage but found a only familiarly loathsome feeling. He threw the text into the trash and headed home to begin anew.
