And so I would sit and think. I would sit at the top of the garden looking out over the roof of the house to the water beyond, and wonder what it would be like to live on a boat. And I would sit on the rocks on the seashore and watch the birds foraging[20] for food, and wonder what it would be like to fly. And I would sit in the sun lounger listening to the rain on the roof, and wonder what it would be like to be old enough to have holidays on your own, in proper hotels with swimming pools and waiters. And sometimes it was lovely just to be sitting and thinking like that for hours on end[21].
At other times my thoughts took more perplexing[22] turns. I would wonder if everything I was looking at wasn’t actually there, that it was just an illusion. Or what if everything was black but only I thought it was light and colourful? Or what if what I heard didn’t match what I thought I was seeing? These were not the sort of thoughts I felt able to own up to at the afternoon tea table, and so I ended up for quite some time believing that nothing could be trusted because my eyes were certainly being deceived.[23] I’m not sure why a ten year old boy was experiencing philosophical angst[24], but it certainly shows that I had an awful lot of time on my hands.
And that’s the point of boredom, isn’t it? Wasn’t Newton sitting underneath an apple tree staring into space, and Archimedes wallowing in the bath, when clarity struck?[25] In my own insignificant way, I think I have always understood that doing nothing is the key to getting somewhere. As a writer, it takes a while to convince others that you are working hard while appearing to be lying on the sofa staring at the ceiling, but once this is accomplished it can be very useful, especially if you are enjoying staring at the ceiling and hear, “I’m sorry, he can’t come to the phone at the moment, he’s working”—which suggests a genius on the cusp of a plot breakthrough rather than someone deciding whether to have poached or scrambled eggs for lunch.[26]
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