Screw

So many times I started a novel or a memoir, and once a dictionary, with no plans to ever finish. What was the point? I already knew how it would end. Writing it out was the same chore as transcribing a Chopin ballade from memory. What was there to be gained, for me and my life?

I long had the instinct that fame and fortune were not what I wanted. It never was the mass of fans that I wanted. It was always one beautiful girl at the café, gushing over my cleverness with a giggle and an unassuming touch of my arm. In my imagination she was the love of my life, the lot of my loins. If we went to bed, it would be fireworks and rainbows and the face of Saint Peter—though of course I was a gentleman, and so after our coffee date would walk on the cobblestones in the narrow streets, speaking of philosophy. That is, wet dreams or erotic esoterica.

Sitting under the tree, the willow that I never knew til the eve of this afternoon, I found a new way of throwing rocks out onto the water. Maybe it was fine to watch them sink, one by one, each one a three-pointer in the court of my making. If it skipped, it was the miracle of walking on the waves. Yet the mundane itself was magic and marvel.