Once I finish with the current writing project, I want to write Arnaud’s story.

Does Arnaud exist? As a fictional character, a bit. As a fully-developed one, not yet.

Side by side this morning: a text by André Markowicz dealing with his translation of a premonitory Russian play written by one Leonid Andreyev, five years before the October Revolution of 1917. And a photographic reportage in The New York Times by Aris Messinis of Agence France-Presse, documenting rescue at sea of overloaded rafts and vessels crammed with the living and the dead. The only bearable aspect of the photos is the knowledge Messinis often puts aside his camera to help the rescuers.

No answers. At least, none of the scope and magnitude needed to deal with the growing sense of surfing on the edge of a tsunami. Of the disproportion between the trite, tiny, tinselly gimmicks thrown up as distractions while the disruptions reach unmanageable proportions.

The fascinating, frightening ability we have to section off entire fields of reality. The occasional saving graces of the finer human gifts.

Staying lucid, as much as possible.

Illustration: a tiny sheaf of notes found at a brocante, dealing with maritime law. I haven’t managed to do justice to the find in this writing project. Perhaps in the next. Or in a re-write of this one.