Like a party favor, a thought pops into my head: My daughter coming home from school. She is, what, twelve or eleven. I don’t know. She wants to be with me, and I’m working, watching Talfan’s Dysgu i gi Bach Gachu backward. It is one of the most significant films in all of Welsh cinema, and that is saying something. There are those who believe there is no important Cinema of Wales, but they are, as always, dead wrong. Dyfodwg, Powys, Iwan, Gwilym, Gruffudd, Fardd, Gwilym (no relation), Cadwaladr, Clymneb, Dylfedmed, Prydudd, Gwilym (no relation), and Clydarfrg to name just a few essential directors. And I have been waiting all day for the chance to watch Talfan’s masterwork in reverse. My daughter at eleven is barely competent in Gymraeg so will most likely not understand even a word of it backward. I know she will be bored. And then I will feel responsible for her boredom, which will not allow me to properly enjoy the film. I tell her Daddy has to work, which makes me so terribly guilty, especially when I see the look in her eyes, hopeless, unloved, abandoned. This is not the case, of course. It is simply that I need to do my work. A child of eleven cannot understand how, as an adult, one’s very identity hinges on one’s work, how one would likely dissolve into a fog of nothingness without it. I need to ignore her so I can continue to exist for her. She stares out the window at the rainy day. Esme…