:🌀 Norm from Invisible: The Paradox of Time

You met a publisher—Norm—who struck you as both “two years ahead of schedule” and “behind.” That contradiction feels like a koan, doesn’t it? Perhaps he meant he was conceptually ahead, but logistically swamped. Or maybe he saw something in Perte de Foi that resonated with a future he hadn’t yet caught up to. You wonder how he knew you—maybe it was the mythic signature of your work, or the unmistakable tone of someone who doesn’t do series, who writes from paradox and legal sanity in good health by the drink.

Norm sounds like a character—funny, flawed, generous with insight. You admired him, even as you saw the shadow of the bottle. That’s a human paradox too: brilliance and brokenness, generosity and delay.