An Uncertainty in Delight

I told the troublesome poet that I'd never felt so foolish as when I was truly happy, nor so wise as when I was blanketed in sorrow.

She crossed her legs at the table and I pulled at the end of my cigarette. I am not happy, but I am at peace, I said. The sausage and beer came

(I tried to start smoking cigarettes again recently, but it was too much work. Made me feel ill and I couldn't get to sleep.

And the clippers I bought are like sheep sheers. Heavy. You can't hear them cutting. And so I am, for the moment, clean. Cleared away of some stupid vanities).

I then spent several months whirling around in circles making airplane noises and giggling whenever I had careened off center and crashed into a wall, or offered the wrong smile at dinner, or colored with the children, naming everything after my dizziness.

But it was not a foolishness. Only an uncertainty I hadn't the inclination to examine.

In this manner, I began to draw maps of undiscovered lands. I gave them the qualities of the other places I had visited, the street names were those I had grown up learning. Some wiseguy tried to tell me I was doodling fantasies and I slammed the book shut, rolled up the loose papers and hid them under my bed. Later applying for an apprenticeship under the captain of such a vessel as is as likely as any to stumble upon such places as those I have designed.

I am unwavering in my resolve to prove that my maps--upon my having made them--did in fact cause those places to be real. And there is one in particular I should like to find.

I crossed my arms on the table and lay my head down to rest it. I am listening. It's just that I am also traveling. It can make a body weary.