It was a cold afternoon. Today, I wanted to be still within myself, to be quiet...to read and to hear my thoughts. As I held a Samuel Beckett in my hands, flipping over the pages of what has appeared to be the classic version of a theatre monologue called Company, I wanted to switch off all else. Reading has made me restless. Here lingers an intensity to want to finger as many books as I can. I simply couldn't feel more urgent about the prospect. And far from my interests narrowing, it has widened like a tree having blossomed late...its branches crawling in various directions towards a new sky.

What if I don't have enough time? What if the last breath arrived without warning? I adore world literature like never before, I like the classics and stay faithful to British fiction but I also enjoy multicultural voices. Why must it all happen now? This rush towards enlightenment as if it was a promising gold-mine...this restless affectionate pursuit for the fulfillment of the inner self that may have been whipped up from nothing but the glutinous palate of zeal. And reviews. Reviews in journals, magazines and newspapers. I have started to collect them all like a hobby. Or investigative features. Like the tragic story of the late literary agent, Rod Hall, that ran in The Observer magazine yesterday. Of how he was murdered by a gay lover. I want to absorb everything. The cruxifications and the resurrections. I cringe at my melodrama.

At this point, I dare not even contemplate my virgin interests in opera, musicals or the culinary arts. Or of world cinema and exquisite gardens. Think the humble flower bulb. Everything has come to a head. And I could collapse from exhaustion from reflecting too long on thoughts signifying celebration through the root of domesticity and other delicate pleasures.

I want to be very quiet within myself. But it is hard. One's love for life is never stagnant. All sorts of contemplations from many different spheres of a positive energy may flood the heart all at once. If you want to live a full life to the last breath, I realise that an individual has to turn selfish in a way that demands such total absorption, there'll simply never be time to be nasty to anyone or anything. You want to conserve that valuable energy like a buried treasure chest.

Des comes in. He wants to talk and tell me stories of this and that. I smile and listen. Today, he is chatty when he can be so very terse. Especially when he's writing or working on his poetry. Then I could call his name a hundred times and he'd be so absorbed, he simply wouldn't hear. So today, I concentrate on his voluble mannerisms with amusement and interest. I put on some music. The silence doesn't happen. Maybe another mood caught in another hour on another day.