I grasp the drink with both hands and raise it to my lips. The ugly liquid flows down my throat like drops from heaven, drowning my world and everything in it. Effective purification. Soon the liquor is gone and another huge glass appears in front of me. They know me well here. They call the drink Noah's Flood. I laugh. It wasn't Noah's at all. He was just a lucky survivor The flood was the savage vengeance of an angry god. I grasp the next drink quickly, eager to forget, to forestall thought.
A woman swims close and attempts conversation. Spurred by my lingering need for normalcy, I make a half-hearted responses to her questions. The discourse winds in its inevitable way to the question: "What do you do?"
I'm a writer, is the answer. What have you written lately? Nothing. Nothing at all. Why? Because everything I write is crap, so I've stopped writing at all. God knows if I ever answered her aloud, the discussion has internalized. She is no longer necessary. She adopts confused expression and eventually allows herself to be carried away by the tide of people who course up to the bar for service and then swirl, desperate for human contact, back into the ocean of flesh. Meanwhile, my mental battle continues; the joint-venture of despair and alcohol, both in steady supply, drown me in
self-pity.
My mind's eye glides lazily over the whirling eddies of gloom. A dark raven searching my past for a rock of refuge in a futile struggle to escape submersion. I used to write. Everybody liked it: parents, family, friends. Praise heaped upon praise. Weak, too weak to withstand the waves of depression, threatening to engulf me. What the hell do they know? Nothing I've written is truly original. Mental masturbation, vulgar regurgitation. The true artist is a creator. Am I? It is not enough to throw my emotion and experience on the page. Everyone, anyone can regurgitate emotion. My sight
wavers in and out of focus. Another man at the bar, a false smile hiding dull eyes. Unintelligible words pour out of his mouth as he regales a woman with a story or a joke. See? Even him. I must invent emotion and invent characters upon which to inflict emotion. I must have imagination. I must create.
I remain at my barstool. A feeble wave to the bartender brings another drink, another draft from the waters of the Lethe. I pay him. My wallet is empty. I shrug. I am sodden with despair. I allow myself to sink into oblivion.
***
Pain flares in my head as the alarm lets out its insistent wail. After a brief scuffle the sound is vanquished and I return to sleep. I wake up again, more naturally, to a dark apartment. This is not surprising. A lack of access to natural light imposes perpetual darkness. Until I decide otherwise, that is. My hangovers often thank me for my choice of habitat. I lie in bed. Gradually my eyes adjust to the dark. I think back to the night before. As usual, I do not remember getting home; leaving the bar.
A rare moment of whimsy grabs me and I laugh at scientists who spend their lives trying to locate the vestiges of instinct in humans. They'd save themselves a lot of trouble by observing bars at closing time. Bereft of mind and memory, humans are still able to get home and pass out in safety. The homing instinct.
Whimsy vanishes as recollections of last night continue to unfold. Who am I to mock another's profession? I have failed in mine. I am seared by the thought of my mental debate and its resolution. Kindled by memory, my chest burns in anger. What use is art if I can not create? What have I accomplished? I've never built anything new. Old thoughts, old experience, who has not felt as I have felt? The refuse of my soul, dumped on the page; I inflict my pain on others. Emotion is an undesirable side-effect. Drowsiness from medicine, the ashes of the fire, who keeps ashes? The wrapping on a Big Mac. Garbage, ecological waste, polluting an overcrowded world. It is unwanted. What am I to do with useless waste? Burn it.
I climb out of bed and plod to the computer, ignoring the blistering pain which blazes across the surface of my brain with every step. I flip on the computer and the flash of the screen scalds my light-sensitive eyes. Systematically, I eradicate
everything I have ever written. Each file winks out of existence with a tiny flare. All is nothing, but I do not feel relief. My chest burns so hotly that I stagger. "Not enough," a mental gasp, I am urged on. Summoning my dwindling energy, I gather every written, typed and printed copy of my writing and heave it outside. My arms feel like lead; I can barely scrape the paper into a rough pile. Why is this so hard? Nevertheless.
The match flares like the first light of chaos. It makes a scorching arc in the night sky before landing amidst the papers. Beginning slowly, but with increasing speed, the literature blazes until it forms a formidable bonfire.
Ha. Let there be light. Now that's what I call creation. The blaze continues; a purifying immolation. The inferno on the lawn echoes and amplifies within my soul. Each passing second destroys more of my past. Unwanted, it is a sacrifice to the god of Pride. As the flames rise higher I rise with them, revelling in the power of the fire. The burdens of my life are blown away like ashes in the wind. I watch, enraptured, as the fire persists with ravenous appetite.
My chest is hollow, drained by the release of angry energy. My throat is dry and my mouth is coated with thick paste. My lingering hangover recreates the taste of ash. I need to get away from here. I cast about, trying to get my bearings. Finally staggering in the general direction of the parking lot, my body feels light. Every motion is exaggerated, I feel as if I am trying to walk on the moon. I pull myself into the car.
I head for the highway and flee from the city, beginning to feel less and less connected to the earth, until I am floating far above the car. This is flight. I am free! No cares, no worries, no burdens. This is the state I have longed for all of my life.
What's wrong? I feel so hollow, so empty. Looking around, I confront my new view of life. A single road slices a barren landscape. There are no mountains, no trees, nothing to relieve the flatness of the wasteland. The earth itself has taken on a dark brown colour, streaked by massive swaths of deep black. It looks like the whole land has been ravaged by an intense fire. Everything is destroyed, I can't even see the remnants of that which has been burned.
And I float helplessly above it all, unbearably light, as ashes caught in the wind. I have to find an anchor; something solid. How do I get down? Panic is setting in, I am afraid. Try to think heavy thoughts. What's a heavy thought? Heavy thoughts: war,
death, famine, pestilence. It's not working. I strain desperately, for what seems like hours, to find a connection to anything real. It's no use. I am empty, wafting on an endless expanse of nothing.
I don't see it at first. There is a small firefly, sharing my sky. Soon it becomes impossible to ignore. Streaking in from the greater atmosphere, growing larger and larger as it enters my reality. A majestic sphere, blackness ringed by an intensely golden crown. An long, curving train of exultant sparks. These, the comet's minions, appear in impossibly varying shades of red and orange. I am stunned by wonder as the comet fills the universe. It comes impossibly close; it is unbearably beautiful. Then... crash. The inevitable end.
***
I am in a ditch. Blood trickles from my forehead; must have hit the steering wheel. Crawling out of the car and standing somewhat shakily, I am relieved to feel the ground beneath my feet. Well, I might as well start walking back.
My emptiness remains, though. Only the memory of the comet keeps me safely on the ground. How did it get so majestic? Years, millions of years, maybe, of travelling through the universe. It was the sum of everywhere it had been. What is it now? A smouldering heap in the middle of nowhere? This thought occupies me for the remainder of my long walk home. The beauty of the comet, the measure of its experience. Is all that to be lost forever?
A long hike over deserted streets brings me home. I notice that the sun has risen. Striding into my subterranean den, I am strong and resolved. I turn on all of the lights in my apartment, banishing the darkness. The computer screen emits a warm amber glow as I flip the switch. My fingers fly familiarly across the keyboard. My remembered, intimate burden returns.
