What do dreams...

Where is that novel? I get asked this regularly. From someone who wants to see me published, and earning my rightful share of filthy lucre, fame and scandal. Well really I would love some of all three. The first will enable me to live a decadent life; the second to make heads turn when I walk down the street and people scream orgasmically as they recognise me (think Elvis or Britteny); the third to liven up my dull existence - what WOULDN'T I give for a bit of nice scandal in my life.

If you have read Virginia Woolfe's A Room of Ones Own then you will understand my predicament.

Take today for example. I was talking of not experiencing floods yesterday, well I came home after a long tired day at university, and found part of the house flooded. One inch of water. And mud - because it was a rainy day and people had been traipsing in and out to repair the damn thing. The kitchen tap had broken and so there had been a merry fountain for a couple of hours before it was fixed. Charming end to the day - sweeping out water for an hour. Still more to be done tomorrow in terms of clearing up. But for now I have sought oblivion Online - Scrabble (getting eaten up in one game was cheerful) , interweb conversation with friends, and some beautiful paintings by an 18 year old painter. Not to mention finishing Amber Spyglass. It is a bit like seeking Nirvana in the midst of a traffic jam at Pettah.

But writing a novel or even editing it, for THAT I need peace and quiet. Space. Inner and outer space. Which seems almost an impossibility sometimes. And then one needs an element of freedom to be able to write. And then there are lectures - almost a 24/7 nightmare once the semester gets into form. Lecturing is great, I would be the first to say that, but I realise I haven't a life anymore. And I want a life. I want to be able to dream, to paint, to write, to think. I want to do both, but it appears now to me, that both working and following a dream are mutually exclusive. What to do? I haven't the faintest idea what to do.

Add to that the litany of woes - exhaustion with travel by public transport in the heat, migraine, grocery shopping and ongoing housework, endless cleaning, bill payment et cetera et cetera. I just realised what a significant time I spend returning defective goods (and fighting with the shop owners), returning to claim money not returned from places I shopped, repairing defective things that have packed up, not to mention sorting out erroneous bills for water and electricity! Part of me refuses to let people cheat me, but then on the other hand at what price am I having this insane moral high ground. In this country it is like stepping into the Adamsian Total Perspetive Vortex. Black Hole. I mean what can I say. Is this a life?

What is my moral obligation to this world? Is it to use my gift of teaching or my gift of writing and thinking? Or am I called to serve with the daily grind of existence under difficult circumstances and forget my dreams? I know now I cannot do both, a shattering discovery, for one has to live to write or think, but to live one has to eat, and to eat one has to earm, and to earn one has to work. Where does that leave me? Fugged up as a friend would agree. Totally fugged up.

Maybe Virginia Woolfe was right. I need ROOM of my own. Please can I have some. Sometime. Somehow. Someday.