I woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back asleep, so eventually I got up and came out of the room that A. and I are sharing and out into the part of the house where the kitchen is, and stood for a while listening to the ticking of a clock from the other room, and tried to think of what I could write about, seeing that I was awake and might as well use the time to my advantage, but I could think of nothing, or rather did not feel motivated to think with the sort of intensity that is necessary to produce a thought that is worth articulating, and instead went over to the windows that look out onto the verandah and watched how the flag on my parents’ flagpole moved now and then in the breeze.