Niccolò Senise

7131666

Creative Writing

American English

9 May 2022

490 words

Imitation of: The Trick is to Keep Breathing

An Insufficient Reality

The blanket of the bed seems to shrink every time I move. When the feet are covered the chest gets

cold. Hence, I decide to cover myself up to the chin, but my feet are caught by the drafts of air that

penetrate through the window. In the room, the atmosphere is gray and rarefied. The glass of water

on the bedside table appears to assume another meaning. It seems to wither and lose its vitality,

revealing itself to me as something ridiculous with which I have no relationship. It, therefore,

reveals to me as an absurd object. Yet, the glass is there, it exists, but it doesn’t exist for me. I don’t

feel any relationship between things and me. Everything seems to demean and lose meaning.

Something strange is happening to me. Something absurd and awkward. My hands are light,

detached from the rest of the body. I stare at them and don’t recognize them. Then, I try to take a sip

from the glass of water to regain vitality. I grab it hesitantly, not like a normal person usually grabs

a glass of water. My hands are cold and sweaty. The beat of my heart marks the time passing by,

and soon becomes a pounding sound that makes the whole body moves to its rhythm. As the

heartbeat grows in intensity, nothing around me feels real. I wonder about the ontological meaning

of things, from the glass of water to the old tree outside the window. Things have lost their

connotation, as have the words we use to define them. Everything is primitive. I have to get out of

this state of derealization. I have to regain possession of myself and my surroundings. I have to get

out of bed. I have to take a shower, leave the house, and work. Work. Work. Work.
I can’t do it. I can’t find a reason. I look around. Everything is unbearably painful to process.

Maybe if I look in the mirror, I will find vitality. No; I’m afraid. The fear of not matching the last

memory of myself paralyzes me. Instead, I decide to stay in bed staring at the ceiling. The white

ceiling wall. White and empty, like the absurdity of an insufficient reality.

Exegesis: The purpose of this paper is to imitate the style and concepts found in Janice Galloway’s

text: The Trick is to Keep Breathing. Through a somewhat meticulous and surreal description of the

surroundings, I have almost transferred the same atmosphere perceived in Galloway’s text. The

surreal vision of reality causes unbearable pain to the protagonist just as Galloway conveys. In fact,

she shows how hard is to deal with common things every day while being overwhelmed by

enormous psychophysical grief. Some elements of the text have been imported to restore fidelity to

the original version. An example is the mirror. The punctilious and pounding description of the

setting is also very similar.