let's sartre at the very beginning

Musing on the nature of existence this morning in my favourite corner of the Costa cafe in Newbridge, I suddenly became aware of an acute hunger deep within myself.
The beautiful model girl waitress had just got me a coffee.
I was regally ensconced with my notebook.
My pen was artistically poised on the table for effect.
All seemed right with the world.
Then it hit me.
That strange empty longing.
This was no ordinary hunger folks.
This was a hunger that could never be satisfied by any passing wordly pleasure.
Not by caffe latte grandes.
Not by model girl waitresses.
This was the hunger for fame, fortune and glory.
All us artists suffer from it occasionally.
Lately it's been affecting me a lot.
The onset of this emotional state is normally marked by a creeping suspicion that all the worthwhile things of life are in the past.
All the great poets are dead.
How can those of us who remain say anything even vaguely interesting?
How can our words matter when the heart of culture is locked away in the centuries that are gone?
Hunger.
Ah hunger.
This is hunger.
The following story is told of Jean Paul Sartre.

Apparently Sartre spent most of his World War Two in the Cafe Flore in Paris. He would go there everyday, order a single cup of coffee and take it to the darkest corner he could find. There while Nazi troops marched up and down outside, he would sit for hours scribbling ferociously in his notebook. Years later when he had won great fame as a writer and philosopher, someone asked the manager of the Cafe Flore what he remembered of Jean Paul Sartre. "What a loser," fumed the manager. "Everyday one lousy cup of coffee. Everyday just sitting there taking up my space. Everyday for years."

Me and Sartre folks.
What a pair of losers.
Of course in the time I've been scribbling what you're reading now, old Jean Paul would have formulated at least three depressingly negative theories of reality, and written at least one mordantly pessimistic short story.
As a waster he was more productive than me.
So what can we do?
The big lesson for us geniuses is not to waste our energy trying to be Sartre or Orwell or any of the other dead immortals.
They've had their hour.
Somehow those of us who wish to write or create in the present moment, must find our true voices irrespective of what came before.
We must find our own resonance.
After all the joy is in the struggle not the triumph.
Although I gotta tell you, a bit of triumph never hurt anybody either.
Arrah Sartre, I can never write like you did.
Nor speak French as well as you.
But then why would I want to?
Does anybody seriously doubt that someday the owner of the Costa cafe in Naas will be saying heatedly: "Heelers? Of course I remember him. Ten lousy cups of coffee a day and perpetually ogling the waitresses. We all remember him."
Sure he's saying it already.
The present for those of us who live in it, is always the best of times.
Culture is ourselves now.