Just one of the many things that reminded him daily on how peaceful it would be to not have to live with other people. The floorboards of the old South Philadelphia row home, a three-story house, once a rarity on the block, squelched, creaked, and thundered at all hours of the evening. On the days that he never left his room, writing in silence, he imagined living with a baby rhinoceros, that from time to time would have to tumble awkwardly down the stairs to get food and water from the kitchen. His mind would trace the baby rhinoceros's path back up the stairs and into its room, as if he were using echolocation.
The day was a bust, if he had to describe it. A bust for creative endeavors. He drew in ink a large Japanese-style bottle of beer and a little glass beside it, full with its fizzy head. Beside the glass, a simple sandwich of lettuce and tomato. No one would even know that the bread had a cream cheese spread, let alone the kind of cream cheese that has chives, he thought. Details like this are either always impossible to convey on behalf of the artist or impossible to detect on behalf of the observer. To anybody else, this was a lettuce and tomato sandwich. To him, it was a lettuce and tomato sandwich with cream cheese and chives.
He capped his pen in resignation and pumped some hot water from his thermos into a mug of green tea leaves. Sipping it, he thought of a television series he had recently come to love -- Samurai Gourmet. In one episode, the protagonist, having volunteered to be an extra on a film set, looking forward to a free catered lunch, is told a story by a much more experienced extra about the famed director Akira Kurosawa. Supposedly, during a shoot, Kurosawa had placed a prop within a chest that was completely off-screen. That prop, he thought, was the same as the cream cheese with chives on the inside of his lettuce and tomato sandwich.
