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As they say of politics, I have found essay-writing to be the art of the possible Certain work can only be done in those spooky months when particular trajectories align: what was once opaque becomes transparent, and the story may be told in its complete complexity Try to write such an essay at the wrong moment and your movement will be impeded You will have the rudimentary shape you want, but all the curves and angles and lines will remain coarse – crude, compared to what you might have written had you waited   I only really came to understand these things when I began to imagine an essay that I knew I must write, but equally knew I would fail at For years I waited, and if I try to write it now, it is owing to an intuition that has arrived as a blessing of maturity I have become the writer who might accomplish this task On top of that, something has informed me that for a few ripe months the barriers are down, and I may cross in and out of this longed-for terrain unimpeded   I must get this essay right Each word that I put down becomes a part of my living memory – in a very real sense this is self-creation – and that first cut is always the deepest Yes, it is possible to work around the scar later on – to revise, reformulate, rediscover, redirect – but that first attempt is decisive Everything grows from those initial, indelible words   It was a midsummer’s evening, and through the window looking down on the bay the sky reddened, the sun sank beneath the earth That declining sun brought me fear I reasoned to myself that so long as I could see the light, I was safe from whatever had come unleashed in my mind But as that blackness climbed over the land, so too did some blackness encompass my head This is illogical, I know – magical thinking – but these were my terms that evening I was truly afraid of what the dark of night would bring