Unblinking. Me. You. Eternity. Breeze against my nostrils. Sea air. Dock noises. Clanging. Bobbing. Parallelograms of light. Waves. Particles. Everything is happening too fast. I cannot keep up. My brain cannot organize the information. I am a slow thinker. Machine noises. Hammering. Police sirens. Fear. Anger. Everything accumulates. Becomes too much. The human body cannot handle it. Mind is pregnant with too much reality. Ultimate reality. I sit. I write. I am a writer. I have no other means of coping. Sometimes I fuck my wife. She fucks me back. She is a writer too. Scribbling notes into a notebook after the act. We are trying. Whatever that means. Existence. Survival. All of the above. We buy cereals for the kids. Send them to school. The library is a sanctuary. My sanctuary. I go there to read. To write. I take the East River ferry. Sea breeze in my crewcut. I am no longer capable of long hair. The utmost calm is required to persevere. Whatever that means. The ferry makes wake. I feel the bounce of waves. Eternity. Is it going to rain? People say so. I am not sure. I am without umbrella. Gray skies. Dark clouds. Hmmm. Why is everybody here? They are crowding me. Tourists. I am seated at a table. Trying to think. Trying to write. I am writing. Watch me write. No. Kidding. Makes me feel self-conscious. Too much pressure. Stop. Really. I feel. Yes. I feel. Is it obvious? Is it subtle? Sometimes I walk around the city like a frightened rat. Ready to get jumped. Ready for a cat to pounce. I survive. Here I am. Everything is a miracle. Even this. My notebook is for you. No one else. I cannot stop. I am unable to stop. Words keep coming. They are not even my words. English words. Borrowed and stolen. The goulash of experience. Can you imagine this? My nondescript experience? I am surrounded by some of the most amazing buildings in the world. What am I really able to say. Not much. Not much. I am hungry. My stomach is growling. I have no desire to read. Unless it is Beckett. Time is with me. Time is against me. Time is a fiction. A fabrication. If you stop believing in time. Time ceases to exist. Especially here. We are quantum beings. I invented a human being named Zig. Now he annoys me. Refuses to go away. Wanders at the periphery of my memory. Ready to swallow me. Consume me. Beckett kicked my ass. I confess. I cannot wrestle with Beckett. Zig, not yet. I still have a fighting chance. I can become me. I can become me inside a Supernova. What light reaches me I do not take for granted. I have eyeballs. I have a brain. I see. Wavelengths vary. Frequency. Colors. Blue is my favorite color. Green. Orange. I cannot decide. Yellow. Possibly yellow. What strikes me is how language cannot handle any of this. Speak to me, human being. I am made of flesh. Sometimes I think God is going to send me an electronic mail. Never happens. If it ever does, I think I will press Reply All. See what happens. I feel guilty. Always. All the time. What did I do? More likely is: What did I not do? I am always not doing things. My major failings are failings of absence. Simply not being there. Here. Wherever that is. I am getting hungrier and hungrier. A hungry ghost. Eating the emptiness. Never quite satisfied. Even Beckett is not enough. Especially Beckett. I want more. I am handwriting this into a notebook. You can probably see my curled fingers. Feel my hunched back. Pushing my being into a table. Buttocks clenched in a plastic chair. Trying to make something palpable. This is no lathe, this. I can tell you that. But the machine feels the same. Endless turning and turning of… pieces. I learned to turn off parts of myself. A safety mechanism. A protection device. I do not want to live too dangerously. Despite what I tell myself. Café. Food emporium. Fluorescent light. Halogen. Light-emitting diodes. Sir. Are you there? Are you listening? Are you paying attention? I keep getting lost. Lost beyond lost. Some other world. Cyberrealm. Atomic speed. I need an emergency eject seat. Pilot of Nowhere. The kid needs to attend an open house for high school. Probably needs a sandwich. Before I take him there. Ham and cheese. I do not know. Everybody is moving at the speed of clay. Must be the café au lait. Speeds up the mind. Slows down the people. Might go back to the library. Charge my pocket machine. Nothing happens without electricity. I should probably grade papers. Nah. Seven is enough. The present tense is impossible. This is ridiculous. I cannot be here. I am in the future. Or a little behind. Things are getting weird. They always do towards the end of October. Darker. Uncertain. I need a woman to fuck me. My wife is too busy. She might. She might not. Moods are too unpredictable. Mine. Hers. Still. That said. She looked great this morning before she took a shower. Naked except for a three-quarter sleeve jersey. No panties. Hips. Hairy pubis. Television. Everything looks good. Real life is so much harder. Is this really happening? Any of it? It is. I write fiction. I write autofiction. I write truth. Fill in the blanks. Wide open spaces. Frozen tundra. Abyss. Back at the library. I see my wife. She is there. Coming out. Leaving. We say hello and goodbye. She is a writer. I wonder if she can read my mind? Is this chair sturdy? Seemingly so. Good enough. Blue ink spills. My ink-smeared fingers look like the fingers of a crazy painter. The Empire State Building is obscured by fog and mist. I can barely see it across the river. Through a giant trapezoid glass window. Are all windows made of glass? I suppose so. There is also Plexiglas. Germans are funny. I like their accents. There are no Germans here. Not that I am aware. I quake. A frisson of existence. Peace be with you. And also with you. I am a writer. I am an adjunct lecturer of the human imagination. What I say is nonsense. I accept it. I swear by it. I stand behind every word I say. A baby is crying. This library is crazy! I might have to go. Escape. Flee. Defect. Whereto? Great question. Great question. Babies are supposed to cry. It is the only proper response to the Cosmos. 2:54pm. Does that mean anything to you? I have no idea. Has it started raining yet? I have no idea. This novel is getting out of hand. Am I right, pal? Frightens me. Terrifies me. I must go deeper. Deeper into the abyss. Propast is the Czech word for abyss. Stepmother’s Abyss. Spelunkers pilot boats along emerald-green underground rivers in the limestone karst of southern Moravia. This is getting unreal. I need to stop. Put down the pen. Abandon all dope. Unplug the machine.