Believe me when I say you have no idea how late this column has been turned in. When I tell you that I am currently running with the newspaper deliverer, to scribble the last corrections in this sentence, I am hardly exaggerating. My own fault. When a publisher, with a total lack of sense of reality, asked me if I wanted to write a children’s book, I should have pointed out that in my entire life I have not yet managed to create something that seems to be a work rhythm. When I turn in a page for this newspaper a day late, it can still be accommodated by the extraordinarily flexible editors who work for this medium. But the mathematicians among you will have already calculated that a book of about one hundred and fifty pages is handed in one hundred and fifty days late.
The big stick behind this door looks like this: the publisher has put the non-existent book on the cover of its seasonal brochure. It’s here in front of me to remind me that the book presses have already warmed up, the printers are waiting next to their machines, that a spot has already been cleared in the AKO for a stack next to the cash register, that the line for the book signing already starts to grumble, and that Humberto Tan is already going through his question cards. They all begin to shuffle impatiently and say things like, “Say! Is it still for today, Mr. Van Luyn, or eh…?’
Already a year ago I knew that if I would sit down for an hour every day, I could have put the car in neutral a long time ago and let it roll out. But now that the poop is on its way to the ventilator, all the laws of physics have been suspended. I didn’t know it was possible, but it turns out that if you just don’t eat, don’t drink and don’t sleep, don’t go to the bathroom, don’t wash, shave or get dressed, you’ll have frozen feet trembling with coffee at night and Red Bull works until about half past four, takes a nap until 7 o’clock and goes back to work, that you can concentrate surprisingly well. A lot of things happen during those naps. Colors and shapes dance before my eyes, my body becomes liquid, I hear voices and experience moments of religious ecstasy. All those cultures that now and then have a week of fasting and night vigils apparently do so not only because it has to be ordered by the Smurf, but also because the Great Spirit Doors of Perception then open wide.
My children also learn a lot from it, especially in the area of self-reliance. I just saw my youngest shuffle past in very different clothes than the last time I saw him, about five or six days ago. At least, I think it was my child, I must confess that I don’t remember very well what he looks like these days. And I seem to remember that suddenly a woman was walking around in my house, but of course it could also have been a feverish fantasy.
I called the editor of this magazine to explain that I was so spectacularly late because of a book. ‘Ah’, he said, ‘is that for the long-awaited Deadlines Are Really My Thing?’