19: How To Disappear Completely

Kadrey was blind for an entire day. Blind is perhaps not the correct term but in my personal vocabulary and , I believe, the entirety of the English language it is the closest approximation one will find of his 24 hour affliction. The peculiar mechanism that transforms light into the multitudes of the world was corrupted and shapes, colors and depth were lost to the poor man. For an entire rotation of this Earth, Kadrey was not immersed into the inky blackness customarily caused by the absence of light but was trapped in the words of Paul Auster. It is not that this building or that hydrant were beyond his perception but rather that they were replaced by a descriptive paragraph in the style of his prose. Kadrey was quite certain that it was Auster.

After the crisis had passed and Kadrey was once more able to slowly move his gaze through the subtle shifts in the blue of a summer sky, he rather surprised me. "I could have lived with it," he told me, "if I had a good variety available to me. If this car were described by Chandler or this lamp post by Bukowski, I maybe could have lived with it. I could have enjoyed being immersed in words."