Stream

To my left: artificial waterfall whir of the shower running in the other room. To my right: a fighting cicada, resisting repose, joined in by its partner at intervals to the front. Both sounds synthesize. Auricular wonder. In my heart: a raging, firebranded anger. Fade, fade. Neglected coffee cup. White, irregular state of Texas peering out at a hiding angle, the eastern lines blurred out by the overhead light. The shower stops now. The scrape of the shower curtain. The light sound of closing drawers. Cough -- cough. The cicada has stolen me again. Door opens. Belt buckle jingle. Another door closes, with a reluctant sqeak. Somehow, somehow, all is right with the world. The now discernable ticking of the clock ineffably tells why. As if in time with the heartbeat of God.

The coffee cup again; the braggart state again. Live in a state with squiggles, a comedian has said. Footsteps, hollow floor. A person. "I need to get my own alarm clock." Barely hoarse voice. Steps, receding. Someone forgot to feed the dog. She needs to go. A mistake -- too large. Bad judgement.

The coffee cup again. Three-hundred degree angle from me. Books behind the coffee cup. Two stacks, five and five, reciprocated with large volumes: Ulysses, left, bottom; The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, right, top. The door is open -- the cicadas pour through.

The anger is gone. But a problem lies beneath, backbone of negativity. A thought to muffle it. Her. To think, I haven't fallen in love in a while. Eyes burning............The clock again. Click. Click. Click.

Joyce isn't that breathtaking a writer. Why Nabokov praises him so much -- the words, he says: thirty-thousand original words. So what? Hickish words, pedestrian fusings. Snotgreen. Milkwhite. So what? Nothing special. Not like Vladimir.

The decayingly long route of publication. Took one from his early twenties to his mid-thirties before his attempts precipitated in a positive response, and still, he says, there are gems undiscovered, or cropped over by virtue of the excremental prose that gets published a hundred times in comparison with mediocrity. To think that being published is a necessarily high acheivement. In reality, a recognition of one's mediocrity. The high beyond the aesthetic powers of the crowd -- that is the foreign. The few appreciate the good that translates as foreign to the mediocre. All probability is against me. But the voice is insistent: write. Write. God wouldn't imply a lie, would He? Imply a lie. Beautiful.

World, you've stripped me. Terrifying to discover what is left when all earthly hopes have disappeared. A glimmer of divinity? Or nothing? I feel something. Look at the brilliant symmetrical reflection of the pyramid-dotted spherical light on the television. A light streaming out of a two-dimensional cave. Brilliant, impressive, but not beautiful. It can't be beautiful. It smacks of means.

Girl, girl, girl. You go to church incessantly; hardly a week without your presence. But why, hm, are all your pictures brimming with attractive people, "in" individuals, the accepted, the wealthy? A reason to sleep in on Sundays. Churches at the genesis of Christianity were safe-havens for individuals who wanted nothing more than to share divine interactions in an altruistic spirit. To rejoice over the faith of their equally persecuted comrades. Today church is just another social institution. Alcohol for the sober. Tradition regurgitated. Blessed are those who want something more.

I have an entire cosmic symphony with this clickety-clock, with these restless cicadas! The secret to life is this: become aware. The very greatest symphony of all may be found in silence. And the most profoundly deep individuals know how to find this silence in the midst of the very business of life.