ALL NEW DIALOGUE, FIRST IN FIVE YEARS

Ezek: You came so close. I can appreciate that.

Imelda: You know, I did. I really did.

Ezek: And you really didn't have a plan?

Imelda: I didn't. I just sat down, wrote out a title - all in caps, -emphasizing my commitment - and then started to improvise.

Ezek: I sense a bit of weaseling there.

Imelda: Yes, started to. You know, you always hear that starting is the hardest part.

Ezek: Yep.

Imelda: So, you think that, if you just start, then the job is half done. You've gotten through the block, broken the ice, established a front, and then -

Ezek: I know.

Imelda: You realize that you've only started to start.

Ezek: And that you haven't actually started. You've been through this before, haven't you?

Imelda: Oh, so many times. In fact, most times.

Ezek: It's a kind of purgatory, isn't it? You're not in the empty expanse, staring at the blank sheet, wondering how to fill it, or waiting for it to be filled, but you aren't filling it, either.

Imelda: It's an illusion. You're filling something, but not the sheet before you. It's like the sheet was there, but you put another, false, sheet on top of it, and set to filling it instead.

Ezek: But it's so close.

Imelda: So close.

Ezek: Well, if I had to choose from amongst the different ways of missing a target, the trick start is a good one. At least you have something to show when you're done.

Imelda: But it's just navel-gazing. It's you sitting there, talking with yourself, about a failure, and only very transparently as if it's a sort of new beginning, some sort of accomplishment.

Ezek: In your line of work, navel-gazing is worth something, isn't it?

Imelda: Not if you show it off. These things are supposed to broil for a while.

Ezek: Huh.

Imelda: Come to think of it...

Ezek: What is it?

Imelda: What was it that I was going to do, but did this instead?

Ezek: You were going to write a dialogue. First in five years!

Imelda: Isn't that what I'm doing?

Ezek: But it's about your immediate failure to do so, isn't it? Right away, from the very start, you declared it a failure and then went on to explore the phenomenon of failing in that specific fashion.

Imelda: So why does that make for an invalid dialogue? I can just decide, here and now, that it isn't a failure.

Ezek: That would make a sort of fiction out of everything that came before, wouldn't it?

Imelda: I think that for this sort of thing, all we need is a consensus. A consensus on success.

Ezek: That our dialogue isn't just an avoidant anti-dialogue?

Imelda: What do you say?

Ezek: It would justify our presence, to a degree...

Imelda: It complicates the subject, but it creates an interesting symmetry to the whole thing. Do you see?

Ezek: Ah. Ah! I do!

Imelda: Then you agree?

Ezek: We'll say that this was the plan all along.

Imelda: That was a close one!

Ezek: It really was.