I remember the passage out back. It was a secret thing. And that it is what made it marvelous. I remember being there with you. And that makes me sad. That is why I can’t sleep like I remember I did. I wish it were not like that, but I rip everything up, and I think I can answer for that.

That’s easily one of the dumbest things I’ve ever written. Or maybe this is it. Probably. A close second anyway.

Unless there is immediate understanding, I will not engage with you. That is it. There is no more. That is it. There is no wonder, no moral and no music. There is nothing.

The exploding virus came to my town and I didn’t know what to do. People were scared. It was something that they didn’t know. And that was it. There was nothing else but that.

It was a dance called the virus. We were on the sidelinelines and than we were in it. It was a terrible thing but it was us. We weren’t okay. And then it was something else. And, later, we talked about how we would remember all of this.

A portmanteau of ‘scoff’ and law’, meaning one who flaunts the law, it was a word used often during prohibition because some laws are just made to be broken.

However with Trump being the Scoffiest of scofflaws, the fun in the word just isn’t the same.

I just remembered something. I was talking with you. Maybe it wasn’t you. She looked like you. She had a pain in her breast. And I related to that. It was a pain and she spoke about that. That pain. I don’t have that pain in me. And I said my thing. I probably said it too loud. I was empathizing but it sounded like emphasizing. And that was it. The pain in her breast. And I wanted to keep talking and I probably did but I should not have. I did not leave it. So here we are.

Here is the thing. Not the environment. No winter. I woke up today and I thought about my dream like it was real. And I am sure you do that too. But it’s over. Simple. Not a hard thing to think about. Simple. And here.

I can write and write and write. Novels about kidnapping prostitutes, native spirits, 9/11, even abandoning Earth. I can write a trilogy about that. I can write screenplays about high school angst, tree-planting and searching for that impossible love. I can write a lot about that. I can blog 1,200 times about writing all of that – and plenty of other things too, like New York and movies and dead things I find.

I can send letters and emails to agent after agent. I can go to conferences about writing and seminars about cover letters. I can go to a lot of those. I can write the agents again, using those new-found skills. I can do that for 35 years. And I can (and did) receive over 450 rejection emails and letters. I can be ignored too. I can write them back again.

I can do all of that, and yet I can’t get one person, not one, to publish my work, let alone represent it. I should write a book about that.

Suddenly he gave a start; a certain thought from yesterday raced through his head again. But he started not because this thought raced through his head. Indeed he knew, he had anticipated that it would certainly ‘race through his head’, and was already expecting it; and it was not yesterday’s thought at all. But the difference was that a month ago, and even yesterday, it was only a dream, whereas now, now it suddenly appeared not as a dream, but in some new, menacing, and quite unfamiliar form, and he suddenly became aware of it himself. It hit him in the head, and everything went dark before his eyes. (45)

It was a feverish condition with moments of delirium and semi-awareness. Afterwards he remembered a good deal. Once it seemed to him that a good many people were gathered around him and wanted to take him and carry him away somewhere, and there was much arguing and quarreling about him. Then suddenly he was alone in the room, everyone was gone, they were afraid of him, and only opened the door a crack from time to time to look at him, threaten him, arrange something among themselves, laugh and tease him. At times it seemed to him that he had been lying there for at least a month, at other times that was still the same day. (117)

Extracts from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

I hate the idea of deleting. I would rather rearrange, keep the letters that I have created, alive as it were. Why destroy something that I created? It’s mean. It’s lazy. Vindictive. I know it sounds like hubris. ‘Never touch anything created by McPhedran. Those words are precious and divine.’

As much as it might be something like that, I like these letters and words. I made them to be here, to be read. That’s something, isn’t it? Or should I just delete?

I remember the walk to the stadium, around the abandoned concession stands and then the old viewing tower. I used to run up the winding staircase as fast as I could and always cramped up before I was even halfway. But it was bordered up now. The exhibition grounds had the feel about it everywhere – old and forgotten, papers blowing, everyone walking away.

I still read comics in the paper. I didn’t like any of them that much. Andy Capp made no sense. Same with Blondie and Hagar. Rex MD was ridiculously dumb. The worst was Family Circle. So bad that it was good.

It was one of the first things that I learned to mock. I felt superior to it. Kid stuff. I listened to music by Angel, Blood Rock, Goddo, Moxy and The Who.

I stole my first cigarette from one of my mother’s oldest friends and smoked it behind the garage. It was raining and it got soggy. So I had a good excuse to throw it out early. I stole a pen for my mother’s birthday. I hated that pen and scratched it up, but it was always on her desk.

She didn’t know where I was because I was going to a concert. And I wasn’t allowed to do that until I was 18. But it was The Who, and I had to see The Who. Except the concert was lousy. People were drunk and fighting everywhere. A watermelon was smashed beside me. And the music was predictable and boring. I couldn’t believe it. I had a doughnut when I got home. Boston Cream. It was lousy too.