“The art required is to make sounds, words, and forms, whether of base or of noble provenance, open out in back, as it were, to eternity, and this requires of the artist that he should himself, in his individual experience, have touched anew that still point in this turning world of which the immemorial mythic forms are the symbols and guarantee.”—Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology

Fictional fragment:

When he opens his mouth she has an answer, sums up his thoughts, and invariably misses his point.

In burgeoning bitterness over his approaching defection she denounces him as a coward.

“I thought you were man enough for me,” she fumes, “but you’re nothing but a coward, afraid to leave this puny little world we inhabit.”

“This puny little world we inhabit is all we have, and… and I happen to love it with all my heart,” he responds.

“Love it?,” she exclaims, “I thought you loved me!”

“I… I…—”

“What?” she demands.

“I did,” he answers with quiet determination.

That’s the type thing I jot down in my convalescence, between readings of Campbell, D.H. Lawrence, Marcel Proust, Harper’s Magazine, The Walrus, MacWorld, and Wired. Between viewings of films such as The Barefoot Contessa, All About Eve, Being John Malkevitch, All Quiet On The Western Front, and Che.

It’s a hard life I live here, unable to work as I am. A joyously hard Life.

I was tempted to write that this leather armchair here in a marginally busy neighborhood Starbucks with Van Morrison singing Moondance in the background is my own personal Magic Mountain, but besides being literarily pretentious it would be inaccurate. I’ve long descended the Mountain, where I learned a few things, including a language I’m having a great deal of difficulty translating back into the Queen’s own English.

No matter.

“…whether of base or noble provenance….” I like that.

It is all one.

Outside, on this first spring-like day in a week, a man and woman share a laugh.

All is as it should be….