"Terminal Grain"

It was so easy, and it was so hard: you were clutching your copy of Kierkegaard. Repetition. Repetition.

-The Extra Glenns

I got something off of my chest just now. It didn't feel like much. A feeble first step, maybe. Anything, really, to begin to plumb the depths of my being. Since I have felt shallow for so long now. I have begun to collect the answers. But I don't know the questions. I am happy. I am satisfied. (I should be.) Yet I can feel the twitching of adventure. I don't know where it will begin. I don't know the full scale of the journey. I don't like thinking in metaphysical terms. Because I get anxious with metaphysical questions. I can't answer these. I want to, certainly, but what is there, really? When we come to it, won't I just end up naked and screaming something from Tolstoy from the rooftop until the police come for me? I don't have the courage to scream anything from anywhere, and I'm far too bashful for rooftop nudity. But at least I have Tolstoy. Sometimes I think that I'm too narrow, too limited. But I have some Ignatius somewhere, and I have enough poetry to get me through/into a lot of emotional imprisonment. I have the Elder Edda in a place of particular prestige, right in between The Kalevala and Chaucer. Am I being clear enough? I keep trying to ground myself, but every time I try to do so, I am probing Walden's false bottoms. I have constructed this edifice. The sheer and interminable facade. I wish I was a better writer. Maybe then I could publish and gain immortality. But I have spent my life in sloth, and have come naturally into no talent. I have no grasp on human speech, human psychology, or human relations. My essays are miserable and ill-formed. I brood. What is there for this brooder? Where might this brooding reach? Maybe I'll find the other brooders. I'm sure there are others, somewhere. Maybe it is just me and the teenagers in art schools. I can move back to Portland and spend my days smoking pot at Reed. Maybe I can take responsibility for something. Certainly, I am having some great responsibility thrust upon me. But what of it? I will simply try to form up myself from this innocent. To perpetuate my sorrows, and in that way, grant upon them the gift of immortality.