The Novelist

He walked over to his desk and tried to write, but nothing came out. He picked up his notebook, where he jotted down his poetic thoughts or things he saw on the street to draw inspiration. But his writing was hurried and illegible. His words seemed empty, random, cliché. He turned on his tape recorder and listened to what he had recited, things that were supposed to be so insightful that if one took time to try and write them down, the meaning would be lost in a jumble of bad handwriting and nonsensical run on sentences. Some ideas are so delicate that they can only be expressed in livng words. But the only thing he heard as he played the tape, were hollow meaningless words whose accent made him cringe. The last phrase that played was “nothing there shall be my cry until the very day I die”. Disappointed with his lack of creativity, he got up and turned on the radio to the news. As he poured his hot bitter black drink he listened to the weather report. The familiar words of the broadcast soothe him and dissolve away his frustration and leave his mind the same way that the hot black coffe is poured from the pot. He walked ovdr to his chair by the window and sat athed in the muted glo of a new day. He sat there for a while, comfortable and satisfied, full of coffee and watched the city come to life from his winow under a harsh colorless sky. He envied the city. The buildings and the shops and the people running their daily routines as he imagined them. The city twas simple it its feelings, itshear was open for the whol worl to see and it didn’t have to appologive or explain itself because ther was nothing to explain. It was wahat it was and it was contet by it. he tried again to write, just what he was thinking about right then about the city. About how it “has no real secrets to conceal, no mysteries for inquisitive minds to ponder.” As long as the sun rose in the east and set in the west all was well. But the artists lives outside of the city. He is calloused and immune to its simple pleasures and elementary perspective. Nauseated by its chronic routine. The city’s soul purges its sins when the sun comes up on the horizon, and indulges them when it goes down. As it should be. They were lost to the from the world, these banal urban transgressions. But not to the artist. He would sit there by his window and watch the cit enviously and spitefuly as it droned about along it’s mind numbing track that made minds vapid and slow by the din of voices and car horns. There hew uld sit and sip his bitter black coffee and countover the sins of the city (a possible title?). and as he sat, he would feel something bubble up from inside him. From a dark source that was some how outside of himself. From a place that he had found buried deep in the land fill of forgotten crimes and misgivings of passion. And there, deep inside him, he could feel the smooth surface of a hard black core, heavy, suspended in space like a dead imploded star. The black core would substantiate a little more every time he indulged it, it’s gravitational pull was definitely getting larger. It’s influence was cancerous, and tingled as it spread through his body to the tips of his fingers and the top of his head. Once again his eyes would be veiled by a blackish blue haze, and his thoughts would run hot, bitter, and black, burning out his other feelings of comfort and contentment. He would sit by his window like a twisted old man or an owl and watch with cold eyes the vapid, self absorbed workings of the city that was oblivious to anything but it’s own routine. He would watch looking for a flaw, a weakness but he saw none and yet he sensed an impending doom that loomed over the city. It quaked under it’s streets and beat the hearts of the men and women who kept it alive. He couldn’t explain it. when he tried it would elude him like a dream, cleverly escaping his web of words and explanations. He would see it sometimes, almost. Out of the corner of his eye when he wasn’t really looking for it as he was now. it was like a shadow behind cast by something that you carry. It had crooked yellow claws and grinned with crooked yellow teeth. It did creep up behind him, every once and then, but it vanished once he turned to catch a glimpse of it. angrily, he would exclaim, “Nothing. There.”. it is now at the height of his anxiety that he would try to write again. Attempting to express himself. He knew something was there. It had to be. Bit nothing ever came. His pen hovered above the paper like a predator, waiting for an opportunity to move with speed and accuracy. He would read his notebooks and listen to his tapes over and over again; and within the run on sentences and halted scratchy phrases, a new meaning would arise profound and beautiful. A meanin that could only be read through the bleak colored glasses. Furiously he would write and when he had finished in disgust he would turn away and again he would look at the city, the great bloated city that has the been oblivious to his slanders the entire time. Then he would exclaim, “there is something wrong out there! I know there is. I can see it when I close my eyes, I can hear it when I’m alone. There are times when I feel it’s hot sour breath on my neck, but when I turn, there is nothing there. The sinister thing is gone. Where does it hide? No one ever hears him of course. No one reads the chapter. And even if it did, it wouldn’t flinch a chamber of it’s great muscular heart. And there he sits, and angry and alone, watching the city from his perch, looking for something in it’s dark alleys even though he knows that there really is

Nothing. There.